‘Come in.’
Hilary stepped into Ivan’s basement living room, surprised to find it almost bare of furniture, but enlivened with unlikely things like a Victorian rocking horse with a real hair mane and tail, and an ancient cast-iron sewing machine dismantled on the floor. The window was high up, and the already fading light seemed greyish and half-hearted, which increased her nervousness.
‘Sit down,’ urged Ivan, pointing to a cushion. He sat himself, cross-legged. She hadn’t crossed her legs since the age of seventeen, let alone squatted on the floor. Liz had lent her an old tracksuit, which at least was less revealing than a skirt, yet it still felt wrong to sit so casually beside him, legs splayed out in front. Although they covered more, the trousers seemed immodest – emphasised her legs, her woman’s hips. And if it were wrong to sit alone with Liz, then how much worse to be shut up on her own with a stranger and a man. Though was it really fair to class Ivan as a stranger, when he was part of Liz’s family – or so she’d claimed this morning – who had lodged there seven years, watched Della change from a gawky ten-year-old to a glamorous seventeen? She glanced down at his feet: bare feet, with dark hairs on the toes. The hairs disturbed her, seemed so male, so animal.
‘Right, Hilary, I suggest we plunge straight in. Liz says we’re eating early, so we haven’t got much time.’
Not much time? Two hours, or even three? She’d thought in terms of half an hour, at most. She glanced behind her at the door, then up at the small window. Basements were like dungeons: you felt trapped.
‘Are you comfortable like that? Don’t worry, I don’t intend to bore you with a load of dreary theory, just the barest outlines.’ He clasped one foot in each hand, his knees so supple they touched the floor each side. ‘Remember what I told you in the pub, how we have to change bad habits?’
She nodded, tried to make her back as straight as his.
‘You see, habits are so crucial, they affect not just our posture or our health, but our feelings and emotions, even our relationships. Okay? So we have to change the bad ones, replace habits with more conscious control, try to develop an awareness of what we’re doing with our body, and especially the relationship of the head and neck and back. Once we’ve got it right, we can just leave ourselves alone, let our body be. It knows how to function, if we don’t keep hindering it.’
He suddenly got up, opened a cupboard door, on the back of which was hanging a full-length skeleton. She jumped in shock, tried to edge away as the grisly yellowed skull moved towards her, grinning. A skull was the emblem of the hermit, emphasising the vanity of earthly things, which would all end as ash and bone. The empty sockets seemed to stare into her own eyes, reminding her of death again, damnation.
‘Meet Rose,’ he said. ‘Yes, she’s female and quite friendly. Why don’t you shake hands?’ He held the hand-bones out to her, the jointed fingers dangling. ‘It’s a miracle, that hand. Eight bones in the wrist, five more in the palm, and fourteen hinged ones, which form the thumbs and fingers. She’s got about two hundred and fifty bones in all, counting all the tiny ones and give or take a few. So have you.’
She glanced down at her own hand. There was no resemblance to the gruesome bony object Ivan was insisting she admire.
‘Now, see her head?’ Ivan dropped the fingers, stroked the blank-eyed skull. ‘It’s heavy, very heavy. Most heads weigh a good nine pounds.’ Ivan rummaged in the cupboard, brought out a canvas bag tied round with string. ‘Hold that,’ he said.
She was startled by its weight, her arm dragged down and hurting.
‘That’s nine pounds of sand. I measured it out specially, to try to show my pupils what their spines have to carry every day.’
She was relieved to put it down, less happy when she felt his hand move from Rose’s skull to hers, stroke along its outline. No one ever touched her, least of all a man.
‘Relax,’ he said. ‘You’re very stiff. The first rule in Alexander is to free the neck, so the head goes forward and up, instead of back and down.’
The hand was moving on her neck, as if rearranging it, steadying her head, her spine; finding knobs, protuberances, she didn’t know she had. ‘That’s it, drop the nose. Now try to let your shoulders go. You’re tensing up against me. I won’t hurt you, Hilary, I promise. I want you to trust me. Just let me lead you while we walk around the room.’
Walking seemed impossible. How could she manoeuvre all those different bones, make sure they worked together? She was aware that she was stiffening even more, as Ivan led up her and down, using both his hands now, guiding her, gently repositioning her head and neck and back.
‘Drop the nose, drop the nose! No, not the eyes as well. Look up again.’
‘I can’t. It doesn’t work. If my nose goes down, my eyes do, too.’
‘No, they don’t. Like this, see? That’s better. Now free the neck.’
‘I’m sorry, Ivan, but I don’t know what you mean by free the neck. I thought it was free. It all feels so confusing, as if I’ve never walked before.’
‘Don’t worry. It’s okay to be confused. Just stay with the confusion. Don’t fight it, Hilary. You’ve dropped your eyes again. Keep them looking up and out. Don’t try so hard. Just be, forget yourself. Try smiling, if you like. It’ll help you to relax. That’s not a proper smile. Make it more convincing. Better! Now smile with your back. Smile with your buttocks. Smile with the soles of your feet.’
She was laughing now, not smiling. It sounded so absurd – and laughter helped to cover her embarrassment when he used words like buttocks, a word no Brignor nun would have in her vocabulary.
‘No, I’m serious. A smile is a great release. Now smile with your whole body – let it go still more. Good! That’s good. We’ll do it one more time, okay?’
He led her up and down again, up and down, round and round, at the same slow but rhythmic pace which seemed gradually to calm her, mesh in with her breathing. She felt a sudden joy in the simple fact of her bones and body working; in her slow breath going in and out, her face and body smiling, the touch of Ivan’s hands. She passed the rocking horse, a piebald with a scarlet bridle, flaring scarlet nostrils. She was a horse herself, stepping out, going through its paces, guided by its trainer. Nice to be an animal, with no restraining conscience, something wild and free.
‘Right, now I want you to lie down – just stretch out on the floor here.’
Lie down? She couldn’t, wouldn’t. When he’d said a lesson, she’d thought in terms of theory, the principles on paper, rather like her novice year at Brignor, when they’d sat at desks in rows – good obedient children in a classroom, studying the Scriptures and the Fathers, the Rule and Constitutions. But to stretch her body out, let some man stand over it … Impossible. He had turned his back to her, was fashioning a mattress out of cushions and a rug.
‘I’d like your head at this end, and both your legs bent up.’
‘No, Ivan, really. I …’
‘What’s the matter? Does your back hurt?’
‘No, it doesn’t, but …’
‘What’s wrong, then? You’re so tense now, we’re undoing all the good we’ve done. Just sag like a rag doll and allow me to position you just the way I want, okay? You don’t own your body now. It’s mine, like Rose’s is. No, let me move that leg – not you. Just feel its weight sinking into my hand and then into the floor. Don’t look so worried, Hilary. Forget yourself – relax, release.’
Reluctantly, she lay back on the floor, tried to release not just her limbs, but her inhibitions, terrors. It felt extremely strange and dangerous to be touched – a man’s hands actually moving down her body, coaxing it to lie the way he chose. Yet the hands were very gentle, seemed to treat her body as if it were something rare and precious, not the mass of sinful flesh it had always been before. It was almost a relief not to own that mass of flesh, to let someone else dispose of it, take charge. She hadn’t realised how profoundly tired she was; exhausted from her night awake, sleepy from the wine; had no more energy to argue or resist. She closed her eyes, sank down, suddenly heard music, strange Eastern-sounding music, slow and sinuous.
‘Now, I want you to try to concentrate on just that line of music, follow where it goes, stay out of your head.’
It was so different from the Mozart – mysterious, unstructured – yet she tried to enter it, be part of it, feel herself a sitar or a gong, softly beaten, gently played upon. Her eyes jerked open as she heard a match strike. Ivan was lighting candles, two stubby scented candles, set in saucers, as if he were preparing for some ritual. This was his religion, he solemn as a priest. She shut her eyes again. It was easier to relax if she saw him as a priest – not a man at all, just a minister, a celebrant. Priests must be obeyed. Again, she tried to fix her mind on the undulating spiral of the music, do as he had told her, let her fears and worries melt away. She hardly stiffened as she felt his hands return to her again, massaging her shoulders.
‘What you’ve got to realise is that you’re made like Rose, with bones, and be aware of all those bones. I’m going to point them out to you, tell you all their names and what they’re for.’
His voice was like a mantra, very soft and soothing. She felt him trace each vertebra in her neck – seven tiny separate discs – then gently press her collarbone, her shoulder blades. She marvelled as he said each name, as if he were presenting her with new and priceless gifts. She had always felt strangely insubstantial, as if she didn’t have a body, let alone these complex clever bones. Bones endured for centuries, while vegetation rotted, flesh putrefied and fell apart. She had just been made immortal – not her soul – her solid, iron-hard skeleton, a rare and precious fossil, dug up by Ivan after millennia had passed, discovered whole and perfect in some lonely Norfolk ditch.
‘Feel your ribs,’ said Ivan. ‘A dozen pairs of them. They’re connected to the spine at the back and the breastbone at the front.’ He took her hand, laid it on her ribcage, made her touch each rib in turn. Her heart was beating far too fast, thudding through her body. Would Ivan notice, wonder what was wrong? She hardly knew herself, except that it was an extraordinary sensation to have a man’s hand on her chest, just below her breasts; aroused a frightening mixture of excitement, panic, guilt. Yet Ivan himself seemed totally relaxed – just the teacher with his pupil, nothing more alarming. She must see herself as pupil, or as child or baby, even. The lesson did stir memories of babyhood; dim recollections of her lying on a rug as a tiny helpless infant, some dark and shadowed figure cosseting her body, talking to it gently. Yes – ‘it’, not her. ‘It’ was safer.
‘Now, just lie still a moment, and concentrate on all those bones I’ve mentioned – try to own them with your mind, make them a reality.’
That wasn’t difficult. Never before had she felt so grounded in her self, so conscious of her body’s power and structure. They were her, those bones, as much her as her conscience, or her will; more solid and more central than her faith. Yet, for thirty-nine years she’d been completely unaware of them, lived as if without them, put all her concentration on her soul.
Ivan’s hands were creeping lower now. She tensed in sudden fear again, heard her stomach rumble; flushed at the loud noise it made, as if it were expressing her unease. She was so open to him, vulnerable. Although fully clothed, she felt naked and exposed, her whole body in his power, like a specimen on a dissection table; its skin split open, its rumblings magnified.
‘Don’t worry about the gurgles,’ Ivan smiled. ‘That often happens when you’re learning to relax. Let it rumble all it likes. We’re so embarrassed by our bodies, so terrified they’ll belch, or fart, or otherwise disgrace us. But none of those things matter. A fart’s no worse or better than a cough.’
Her face was crimson now. No one said such things, used such words in polite society. A nun would no more fart or belch than run naked through the chapel. Yet she was intrigued by Ivan’s view. Okay to be confused, he’d said; okay to do the things which others labelled vulgar or disgusting. She had spent so many years condemning everything she did as wrong, or at least as less than perfect, it was a relief to feel she was all right as she was; all right gurgling, nervous, muddled.
Ivan was still talking, working through her bones. She felt humbled yet inspired by his attention, the way he seemed to make her so important, as if her bones, her body, were the only things which mattered in the world – the first time she’d ever felt that in her life.
‘Feel the wide wings of the pelvis, the big hollow space inside. I want you to rock your pelvis gently to and fro, so you can feel it working, be more aware of it.’
She didn’t move. Her other bones were fine, but not her pelvis. She knew little of anatomy, but morality alone put the pelvis out of bounds. She felt so flustered and self-conscious now, she had missed what he was saying, tried to pick it up. His voice was slow and serious, a teacher’s voice, lecturing to his pupil.
‘The pelvic girdle is rather like the shoulder girdle, in some ways, anyway. They diverged in evolution, but they’re patterned on the same basic plan. Or you can see the pelvis as another sort of head – two very heavy weights, one at each end of the spine. In fact, that’s quite a good analogy, because the skull protects the brain, while the pelvis surrounds all those vital bits and pieces, like the bladder and intestines – and the ovaries, of course, in Rose’s case, and yours.’
She tried to concentrate. Did she really have to worry, if the pelvis were just another head, another heavy weight, not private or embarrassing at all; just a bone, an amazing bone which supported the spine, provided attachments to the legs? Yet still she hesitated. Rocking seemed so blatant, and completely inappropriate for someone who’d been taught so long to live like a statue, rigid and restrained.
‘What’s the matter, Hilary? Have you nodded off or something?’
The teacher – sounding sharp now. She dared not disobey him. She screwed her eyes up tight, as if disowning her own body, tried to escape into her head, keep her real self separate and apart. Then, nervously, reluctantly, she started rocking; not daring to let go, at first, just moving very stiffly, as if her joints had rusted up. Yet the rocking itself began to calm her and relax her; became gradually more confident, built into a rhythm, a lulling gentle rhythm, fusing mind with body, breaking down the boundaries she’d erected in her mind.
‘That’s fantastic, Hilary! You’re doing really well.’
His praise was like a blanket, warm and cosseting – the first praise she’d ever had – and for something so ridiculously simple. Now she’d got the knack of it, she couldn’t stop her rocking. It felt soothing, strangely comforting, as if her body were in tune with some larger, cosmic rhythm, expressed also by the music, which seemed to spiral on and on, never came to rest in a climax or a cadence, but worked through endless new and lilting harmonies. The square of window had darkened into black, no daylight left, no dull and cold grey clouds; only the bright flames of the candles sending nervous shadows nickering up the walls, the smell of wax and musk. She was excited by the fact she owned a pelvis, a moving working pelvis of her own. She rocked harder, faster, feeling her whole spine press against the floor, vertebra by vertebra. The movement seemed quite natural now, helped express her triumph that she had bones – not just that awesome pelvis, but two hundred and fifty other bones – all hers, all indestructible.
Ivan was still praising her. ‘You’re so much more relaxed now. You’ve really opened up. It’s important to be open. Think of all the “open” words – open-handed, open-minded, open house – all good words, aren’t they? To be open means you’re vulnerable, okay, but that’s better than being closed through fear. People waste so much time on fear: fear about the future, or a constant nagging dread that the things which happened in their past will poison them for ever, or recur again to trip them up. You’ve got to let that go, trust life to be good.’
She stared at him. If only it were possible … She felt she had stumbled on some new religion, with Ivan as its priest – a priest in purple tracksuit bottoms and a tee shirt with the logo ‘Bulmers Devon Cider’. She had been so self-absorbed, so nervous, she’d hardly noticed that he’d changed his clothes, at least his top and shoes. He was wearing soft suede boots now, fringed around the calves. She glanced up at his body – the strong but narrow shoulders, mobile hands, flat stomach – let her eyes go lower, quickly looked away again. She had seen the bulge between his legs, outlined by the clingy purple fabric. He was man, as well as priest, and the fact frightened and disturbed her. How could she have rocked like that, so blatantly, so eagerly; lain down on the ground, with that … that bulge so close to her, maybe almost touching her as he reached down to guide her movements? She had tried to kid herself that she was just a tiny baby, but the truth was far more shameful. She was a mature and adult woman, who had allowed a man to stir up dangerous feelings. She scrambled to her feet, appalled. She had totally forgotten that she was still bound by her vows – a vow of chastity, which included not just deeds, but thoughts; which enjoined her to avoid even occasions of impurity.
‘Don’t get up so quickly or you may feel dizzy. What’s the matter, anyway? We haven’t finished yet.’
‘No, really, Ivan, that’s enough. It’s so … new for me, all this.’ She forced a nervous laugh. ‘I need to take it slowly, like the gin.’
‘Well, I hope you enjoyed it. It’s meant to be a pleasure, not a penance.’
‘Oh, I did.’ She tried to sound more gracious. There were sins against charity, as well as against continence. It would be wrong to bolt away, let Ivan think she had derived nothing from the lesson, when he had given up his time. ‘I mean, just to realise that I’ve got a body … It’s funny, really, we use the word so often, yet as far as I’m concerned, bodies never have much weight or substance. I mean, “Body and blood of Christ” – you know, in Communion. I’m always saying that, but I must confess I’ve never realised all its implications. It was a kind of … spiritual formula, something miraculous and precious, but still rather formal and remote. But when you think just what it means. Real blood, real body.’ She broke off, startled, could suddenly see Christ Himself with bones, a rocking pelvis; struggled to suppress the image, which must be blasphemy.
‘Well, blood’s as much a miracle as bones, of course. Have you ever seen blood under a microscope? No? Hold on a sec, don’t go.’
He disappeared himself, returned in just two minutes with a stout mahogany box, which opened up to reveal an antique microscope, its dark-grain wood and shining brass cradled in a handsome case.
She touched the highly polished grain. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Yes, isn’t it? It was a present from my father when I was studying Biology.’
She felt almost surprised to hear he had a father. He seemed so self-sufficient; living on his own, working from this basement flat, without colleagues or an office, that she couldn’t quite imagine him with parents or a family, with fixed or formal ties.
‘Are you scared of blood, Hilary?’
‘Oh, no.’
‘Would you like to see your own? It means I’ll have to prick your finger, but I’ll only need a drop. And since you’ve got a good nine pints …’
She tried to picture nine pints, like bottles on a doorstep. It seemed excessive, though she’d never really thought about amounts. Blood was simply there – like bones, like pelvises.
‘We’d better go into the kitchen, so I can sterilise the needle.’
She blinked in the strong light. Her eyes had got so used to the soft flicker of the candles that the kitchen seemed as harshly lit as an operating theatre, though far smaller and more cluttered. A bust of a Greek god sat between the toaster and the kettle, its nose chipped off, a dog’s lead round its neck. A poster of French cheeses had been tacked up on the wall, beside one of human muscles. At least fifty different herbs and spices were lined up on the shelves, including things she’d never heard of, like cassia and fenugreek. She also noticed baby food, several different cereals with chubby naked infants smiling from the packets. Ivan with a baby seemed even more unlikely than Ivan with a father.
He was clearing the table, setting up the microscope. He had also put the kettle on. ‘Cup of tea?’ he asked. ‘They always give you tea when you’ve donated blood.’
She didn’t laugh, suddenly felt scared again. It was too intimate, this ritual. She remembered her and Katy both pricking their fingers when they were just thirteen, mingling their bloods, to make themselves officially best friends. Later, she had confessed it in Confession, felt disloyal to Katy. Yet if she hadn’t done, she would have felt disloyal to God.
As Ivan stood above her with the needle, she kept recalling fairy tales – sleeping for a hundred years, waking up to princes, or bad fairies. Her blood looked far too red, a vibrant pulsing shameless red, which seemed to spurt too willingly. He placed one drop on the slide, adjusted lens and eyepiece, then motioned her to look.
At first, she could see nothing, only greyish blur. She tried another angle, suddenly saw a cosmos on the slide, a whole new world of what looked like tiny planets: hundreds, thousands of them, packed close against each other, yet gently floating in some mysterious aether. She watched, astonished, as they slowly drifted, some somersaulting, spiralling, others motionless. It was as if she had stumbled on a secret universe, closed to her before; awe-inspiring, infinitely complex. She looked up, dazzled. ‘That can’t be just one drop of blood.’ She grinned. ‘You’ve tricked me, Ivan, haven’t you, put something else on the slide?’
‘Oh, no. That’s your blood all right – a few odd million cells of it. The body always seems so reckless in its numbers. We’re all made up of at least a thousand billion cells apiece, with some twenty thousand genes in just one chromosome, two hundred thousand hairs on the average head, and about two hundred and fifty million red cells in one small drop of blood.’
‘Red cells? But these ones are all white.’ She stared down at the slide again, where her brilliant scarlet blood looked colourless, transparent – what she might call bloodless, if the word weren’t so inappropriate.
‘No, they’re not. The magnification just dilutes the colour. There are probably only a few thousand white cells on that slide, and all the rest are red. It’s amazing, really, that something quite so tiny should be so vitally important. I mean, those red cells must be five or ten times smaller than a pinprick, yet if they ever stop whizzing round the body, you’re dead. And the whole system’s so elaborate. You could spend fifty separate lifetimes studying just the blood cells, and still not know it all.’
She continued peering down. If just one drop of her blood was so astonishing, so complex, then she was a miracle in toto. Nine more pints of blood were flowing through her veins – universe on universe. She ran her fingers through her hair, no longer short and butchered, but a dense and tangled forest with two hundred thousand separate trees springing from her skull. She had always seen her body as a puny paltry thing; sought to punish it, downgrade it. But now Ivan had transformed it, made it huge and powerful.
She took her tea almost in a daze, burnt her mouth drinking it too fast. She didn’t want to talk, only reflect on how incredible she was. She had blood, a body, bones; a dozen pairs of ribs, two dozen vertebrae; a hundred thousand genes. She refused a second cup of tea, said she’d better leave now, help Liz with the meal, though it was hard to have to plummet down to roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, when she’d soared to such great heights. They walked back through the living room. The candles had burnt out, left only their sweet scent. She stopped by the rocking horse, stroked its coarse black mane.
‘Have a ride, go on.’
‘Oh, no, Ivan, I can’t. It’s a child’s horse and I’ll break it.’
‘No, you won’t. It’s really strong, that thing, built to last. It’s already survived a hundred years, and with all sorts of people riding it, far heftier than you. You look pretty light to me.’
She was light – buoyant with elation, light-headed from the wine again, which seemed to have returned in its effects, made her feel floaty, as if she might take off and fly away. She climbed into the saddle, with its real stirrups, leather straps, gathered up the reins. She began to rock, cautiously at first, as if nervous of the horse, fearing it might bolt or rear, then gradually relaxing, as it responded to her movements, obeyed her as its mistress. Never before had she been so exaltedly aware of her body moving, working – all the bones which Ivan had created just by naming them, were now gloriously in action, proving their existence. The humerus, connected to the radius and ulna at the elbow by a hinge-joint, flexing as she pulled the reins; the femur, longest bone in all the body, pressed against the smooth flank of the horse; the fibula and tibia hanging free; the tiny tailbone coccyx snug against the saddle.
She galloped faster, faster, back across the centuries, until she was a mighty brontosaurus, a powerful creature with no brain, no soul, nor will, nor conscience, to keep plaguing her, oppressing her; just a huge impressive body, with bones the size of columns; a proudly crested tail, and some forty billion blood cells coursing through her veins.