Summer passed, and Sam went to Bangkok. In autumn, Europe packed herself away from the heat, the tourists. and Keat’s season of mellow fruitfulness merged into the time of La Chasse and the coming of the new Beaujolais. The sunlight was less robust and the rainbow awnings slowly withdrew into their protective casings. Gradually, the pavements cleared of their pink and green cloths, and for a while, the everlasting plastic chairs endured but they too, eventually, retreated into huddles. Winter dropped from the sky and shone on the pavements in the early light of street lamps as sandals gave way to warm boots. The cold whipped past chestnut stalls and flurried the flags on the Pont du Mont Blanc sending memories of red, yellow and dancing bears across the rippled pewter of the lake. Umbrellas mushroomed. Strollers became walkers as people followed their own breaths through the brisk streets and onto panting buses.
She wrote to Sam who wrote a couple of times a week and telephoned often, but on a winter’s night they came again, the memories that had lain hidden under her happiness. In the refuge that she had created with silken carpets and soft cushions against hurting, in the little apartment that held her safe and warm, where she lived and laughed and loved, they slithered out, those memories and nightmares and terrors. Like a devil’s kaleidoscope, she saw the fragments form and shatter and reform over and over and over again. She saw that other self, the frightened woman who was a teacher and a wife and full of fear. She saw the angry woman haunted by the laughing loving ghosts of the two other women who had abandoned her. She saw that other Lizzie, came face to face with herself and watched the ebb and flow of her life as it had once been—or as it had seemed to be.
She was so safe in Geneva. In what other city could a woman today walk in darkness without the fear of attack? Once she locked the door of the apartment, she could even sleep safe. No need to try to stay alert, no need to resist deep sleeping, no need to sleep under siege. With all the blinds open, she could walk around the apartment without even putting the lights on because her building was the highest and she was on the top floor. If she heard a noise at night, she may just wonder what it was—a bird on the roof? A neighbour closing a door? The lift rising or falling? There was no contraction of her muscles, no pulling herself awake ready to protect herself. If she could. No smothering her own screams. If she could. If she could.
She was in a single bed in the guestroom of her home in Australia. She had left the marital bed a long, long time ago. She had woken herself with a scream, and now another was growing in her head and in her throat. She had woken from a dream of evil. Never before had she dreamed such a dream. In it, she wandered through a white brick room with heavy, dark wood beams and doors and hazy fixtures. She was afraid but didn’t know what it was that she feared.
Behind you. Turn. Nothing there. Turn again. Quickly. Where? Who is there? What is there? Turn. Catch it. There is a smell of something frightening. She can smell it. She can sense it. What? Who? Turn. Turn again, quickly. Her skin is shrinking. Her muscles are tight, tight knots. The smell. There is something putrid. She gags. Her chest won’t work. The breath won’t come. There is something here. Her skin is shrieking. Her muscles are tight, tight knots. Her chest won’t work. The smell. The putrid smell.
She begins to scream. She can hear the screaming. The walls are coming in on her. Coming closer. Turn to see what is behind her. Nothing. Turn again. She can still hear the screaming. The screaming is her fear, a fear that is engulfing her. She feels the evil coming closer. Yes. That’s what it is. It is evil. She can smell it. Her skin can feel it. Where is it? Behind her, around her. It is squeezing into her, invading her skin. She feels it. She smells it. The fear is inside her. She can’t control it. The fear. The fear. The evil of that fear.
Then she is lifted. She sees her body flying in faster and faster circles, out of control, out of control, out of control. She is battered against the dark, rotting the wood. Around and around and around in the ever decreasing space. She sees her body being battered. Feels the flying, the force of it. Out of control. She screams and screams and screams until she loses breath. Can’t breathe. There is a hand across her mouth. She is awake but her fear is still there. It is standing over her stopping her breath—and her screams. ‘You stupid, bloody bitch. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.’
In the darkness, she sees his figure, and she knows another fear. She has woken him and brought him into the room. Now, she will pay. Now she will be punished. But I didn’t mean to scream. I didn’t mean to wake you. Please. I’m sorry. Please, don’t let him start. Please. Please, not anymore. It hurts. It hurts and I hate it. I’m sorry I screamed. I didn’t mean to scream. I’m sorry. Don’t. Please, don’t. Please. ‘I’ll teach you, you bitch. I’ll teach you. Shut your mouth. Shut it. Shut it now or I’ll shut it for you, forever.’ I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please don’t. Please stop, please stop, Please stop, Please stop, please. ’You bitch. I’ll teach you. You won’t sleep with me but you’ll call me in here. I’ll teach you, you fucking bitch. I’ll teach you. Shut up. Shut up. Shut the fuck up.’
Why? Why did I scream? I didn’t mean to scream. Please someone, make him stop. Please. Please. Please make him stop. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. ‘You bitch. You smart-mouthed fucking bitch. I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you. I’ll teach you. Oh yes! Oh, yes! Oh-I’ll teach you—you—you—fucking—bitch.’ Done. Roll off.
Instinctively, her hand went to her face as if to touch the blood and the bruises. Nothing. She was whole. She was safe in Geneva in her own apartment, and no one would do that to her ever again. She sat very still and waited for her breathing to settle, her pulse to calm, her muscles to relax. She was warm and safe, and it would never happen again.
Slowly, she sat back against the softness of the cushion. Slowly, she stretched her feet onto the silkiness of the carpet. Slowly she unclenched her fists. Slowly. Safely. Safely, girl. You are OK. You are OK. You are OK.
She ran a bath with lots of lavender-scented bubbles, wallowed in the calmness and the sweetness of the perfume. She was OK. She went to bed and slept, badly, exhausted from remembered fear.
But the memories still intruded next morning. She saw herself of that other time push the students’ books away from her and watch the corners dog-ear as they met the untidy piles at the back of the desk. She remembered the fear and frustration of those other thoughts. That earlier consciousness took over again and again as she had known she had to sort it all out. Later, she had thought. When she had finished this lot. She had better finish soon. All of it. The whole bloody lot. The thoughts came again. Teasing through the air, they flirted past nostrils and ears, played evocatively in her head behind the eyes closed fast against them. The seduction of nothingness. She saw the picture.
It pulled its legs up, knees against the chest. It folded its hands under its cheek and lay still. The twisted and smoothed root lay before its face. It made no noise, but seemed to be growing into the earth, drawing the soft flesh of its body into a contact so close that the movements of pulse and breathing were inhibited.
The Inheritors by William Golding was a beautiful expression of the vulnerability of innocence. Well she was no longer innocent so was she therefore no longer vulnerable? Mothers and wives are the stanchions of community. Stanchions cannot be vulnerable. Therefore, they could not be innocent. Therefore, the community rested on a lack of innocence. What crap she talked sometimes. No wonder she hated teaching “clear thinking”. She had never been good at it. She was always more influenced by those dreadful “emotive” articles than by coldly logical statistics and dull, sound syllogisms. She would never admit it, of course, at least, not in class. How seditious to teach emotions and instinct before reason and discipline. Forget the themes, allegory, the symbolism and all that intellectual stuff. See the tinsel in a pure, primitive pool, revel in a moon that races through clouds but stays in one place and feel affection for food. Wallow in darkness that curls in black tendrils about you; desire, need, be satisfied, be gentle. Or be dead. Mothers and wives don’t have that option. Put it away. Finish this study guide. ‘The Inheritors—We are what our forebears were. Discuss.’ Disgusting is more like it. That, of course, was what the man thought of Gwennie and Nanna. So many battles, so many useless, unnecessary battles in that house, and it was not just the physical battles she had lost.
She had won the fire though. It wasn’t electric, or gas, or oil, or convenient, or easy-to-clean. Stretching herself back in the chair, she had looked across to the glowing fire and been pleased there were still some good things in the world. The walls of the fireplace had been white, rough stone and as the sun was disappearing over the far hill, their walls glowed pink with its final smile. Each evening, she watched that transformation and was delighted. The copper disks she had brought from Greece and arranged above the flames of the fire pleased her too. This was symmetry that delighted her eye as they challenged the intensity of the fire’s embers, glinting and gleaming with their own inner flame that had come from out of the depths of the earth itself. They had been bought in a small village and she liked to imagine the dark man who once mined the metal from Persephone’s winter quarters. Not bad winter quarters at that.
Pity Mum had never seen this place finished. What strength she had had left had all been spent on her own new little nest, her own house. At the age of fifty-one, Gwennie had finally had her own house, and then she died. There were funny rules in this game. A good mother couldn’t just choose to die, but a good mother who didn’t choose, who didn’t want to die, who wanted to live because at last she could see some hope of real love and happiness—that mother died. Bloody hell, if there were a pattern somewhere it must have been created by a man-god. Back then, Lizzie had heard the man’s car. Speak of the Devil. Oops, sorry. A mere slip of the metaphorical tongue, so don’t take it personally.
The man she had once been in the habit of thinking of as civilised had become a violent stranger, and he was turning her into someone she did not like. She had behaved stupidly, all that screaming, swearing and searching for words that could hurt. Why had she not just walked? It was surprising how savage she felt. Killing or hurting were so abhorrent to her intellectual being, to all her natural instincts, yet in her impotent rage she could almost have killed. The violence had been taking her over. She heard it in the throb of her pulse. She saw it reflected in the shock in his eyes. She trembled with it in her guts. She could kill if she let go. She could kill something as weak, as puny, as ineffectual as that man. It was really strange. She would even have understood killing in defence against something stronger, but she was surprised to think her rage could be so savage against one who was really so unworthy.
It wasn’t as if she even needed him in any practical way or loved him in any way. He had once been company and been there. There was nothing else. Never had been. How often had she joked about women who stared at the ceiling and thought of England? She had never admitted to anyone that she had never known the full joy of being with a man while she was married. What was the price of virginity and chastity? Married in white and had never strayed since despite having chosen someone with no desire to please. What a fool. Faithful to a man who gave her nothing for all those years and then tried to use her as a bargaining chip in an exchange. He did not have the guts to walk away—and neither did she. Lizzie was certainly Gwennie’s girl in many ways, and there was no genetic link with Nanna but sometimes she remembered those stories of Nanna’s anger. No one bullied Nanna.
Well, she had told herself she did not have much choice. Until Ahmed (don’t think about Ahmed) no one had made her an offer. She had salved her pride by saying that was because she appeared to be happily married. Perhaps she was frigid. Perhaps men could tell that. So why did she feel so frustrated? Why did she sometimes ache for a caress, a touch that would recognise her? Why did she catch herself looking at men with strong bodies and even wake at night with the memory of a dream and a passing acquaintance still on her skin?
Damn them all. Damn them all to hell. She wasn’t frigid. She had just settled for a comfortable life. A comfortable life? What a joke. No more dreams. Goodbye to Walt Whitman and his stallions and sailing sealing vessels to Iceland. Settle down. Time passed. The anger had exhausted itself slowly. It had faded. So had the dreams. Then the woman dreamt of a time when she had been able to dream. It was over. No more dreams. No special love. No one to recognise her with a touch. The hopes had just slipped away. She lived without them but she didn’t like it. Somewhere there was still resentment that she had never really experienced love or life. It wasn’t fair. The potential had been there. She could have loved. The ache remained. The only dream was an attempt to dream how Gwennie would make it all just a story.
I woke up this morning and put on the usual mask. I adjusted the mouth so that it was neither grinning nor sneering nor sullen. There that should be right. Now the eyes. Mustn’t glitter strangely. Mustn’t be glazed. Are you on drugs? That constant fear of his. Clean teeth. It would be shameful if they were false. Open the pores. Clean the skin. You don’t want aging acne, do you? I don’t want baby acne or middle-aged acne or senile acne either. Can pimples get the pension? Perhaps they get that dreaded forties-spread. Or even—shut up. Fix your face.
There. A wholesome, ordinary housewife. That should delight any ordinary husband because ordinary was a basic requirement. I wonder. Down the stairs through the hall—that amber glass looks like translucent crap—down into the conversation pit, up out of the conversation pit, into the silent noise of the kitchen. The electric jug is beginning to gurgle. Silly fool, what’s so funny about a plug up your bum and power shooting through you? Anything for a thrill, I suppose, but we are using you, Jug. I’m using you, Jug. The toaster squeals as the bread is dropped in. Some fun, huh? Toasting, roasting, scorching, burning. You little devil, you.
The paper scurries as those hands crease it and drag down its spine to press it into a convenient shape. Still everything is silent. The paper is dropped. It has served its purpose. The masks are in place now. Yes, she has done a similar job on her mouth, her eyes, the cheeks. That sure is a beauty. She almost looks human. Well, start the tape and say something, wifey dear, let’s pretend like a real family.
Good morning
Good morning
Did you sleep well?
Yes, thank you.
Did you sleep well?
Yes, thank you.
Have some breakfast.
I’ll have some breakfast.
It’s a lovely day.
A lovely day.
Have a good day, dear.
Have a good day.
We do get along well. It’s just like TV and TV is real. Reality matters. We all have to face it, can’t live in a dream world. That’s what he says, and he should know, that’s what he says. It’s a bit like being infallible. How do I know you’re infallible? Because I’m infallible and I’m telling you so. That’s how he talks when he’s wearing his God-face. It looks funny with tracksuit, joggers and grey, flaccid flesh, but still it’s his favourite at this time of day. At any time of the day. That’s because he’s old. He says that he isn’t, that he’s fitter than I am, in the prime of his life. He’s older, of course, but not old. Experienced, wise, in control. He can make things. Like me. He made me. Made me as I am now. With my help because I let him make me what I have become. Together we did it. Somehow I don’t think that pleases him any more than it pleases me.
But I must look satisfied. One fingertip almost touches another and a crumb falls out into space. I can see half a kiss on the side of my cup. What happens to all the other halves? Pack them in mothballs at the bottom of a trunk, save them for a rainy day, wrap them in blue ribbon and sell them at the church bazaar? Well-formed half-kisses. Never been used. From a good family. Neat. Clean. Sterile even.
I can see clouds through those other eyes, some sneak out of the nostrils and mouth hole. I bet there is only cloud when he takes that face off, only mist and vagueness and a cold sticky fear. I’m getting frightened again. I’m losing control. That’s not allowed. It’s a deadly sin. Hold on. Bite a bullet. Don’t lose control. You must never be frightened. Straighten your mouth, set your jaw.
That was close. Start the tape and say something, Husband, dear. Please, husband dear; say something this morning. Find some real words to say, look this way and we’ll talk. I’ll be good. It’s all in place and I won’t let it slip again. That only happened once and anyone can make one mistake. I was scared. I didn’t know the rules. I didn’t understand about your friends and being a grown-up, keeping up appearances and being absolutely the same but just a bit better. I didn’t understand. That’s why I told you. That’s why I cried. I was scared. People don’t like people who’re scared. That’s what you told me. That’s why I cried.
The silence is getting noisier. He decapitates a friendly brown egg. She used to draw smiling faces on eggs for little kids, then take the hat off and dig inside the head to take out all the goodness. Of course, it wasn’t cruel. Children were so fanciful. It’s only an egg. Why does it have a face? Why does it smile? They just didn’t understand about pretends. She ate the egg. Then she smashed the smile. Nobody noticed.
I smashed something else the other day and nobody noticed that either. I thought I had found someone who was real. Those eyes looked as if they knew I was in here. I wasn’t using anyone. What a strange thing to say. I don’t use people. I was only joking, Jug.
God-face, my husband, likes me to joke like he does. He doesn’t like me to cry or to let my face crack or fall. So, I never do that, not any more, not out there.
He’s finished the egg. It’s gone now. Forgotten. That’s sensible. He’s dragging a knife across the hot toast. Cut and slash, chomp and crunch. Boiling water on coffee beans. Melt and hiss. All gone. All gone. I’m going soon. Please talk to me, Husband. Say something real. Notice me smashing my head against this face. Help me not to be scared. There’ll be something there in that other place and I’ll like it. I will—when I do it.
You’re not going to speak. It’s over. You wipe your mouth with the paper napkin and screw it up. You drag the legs of the chair until they screech and you leave them. Exit god-face to the world. Now everything is quiet. By-pass the conversation pit. The amber glass prints out my reflection. Up the stairs. I suppose it’s still this morning. I’m not going to change the mask. It wouldn’t fool him anyway. I’m taking it off. Oh, help me, please! Be quiet. I am quiet. Now. Now. That’s it, that’s me. I’m scared. I don’t like this. I’m sorry. I’ll be good. I’ll be still. See, I’m hanging up the mask neatly. It’s naughty to sleep in the daytime. We work in the daytime or we play in the daytime or exercise in the daytime or relax in the daytime. Really it’s all the same. We pretend in the daytime. I’m not pretending. I’m going to sleep. Yes I am. I am going to sleep. I wonder when he will notice.
But Lizzie had lived and the man had survived—thrived even. Gwennie who was Mum had been a bit like that. She had never been mean as Lizzie’s husband was mean and somehow things did often seem to work out for her—at least that was how she saw it. But now that woman was dead, the girl was a woman and a man was smiling into his glass. He was so sure of himself in his well-cut suit with his manicured nails and blow-waved hair and blue, polished eyes. He was sure of himself and sure of her. Her “accident” had unsettled him for a while but he had learnt to be more careful, more discreet. So he was very sure. His wife could be difficult, even highly strung, but that could be accommodated without too much effort. Her swearing and occasional lapses unto public sarcasm were distasteful, of course, but a man just had to cope with them. But, but, but. He always had a “but” to come back with in any discussion, whenever he was confronted, whenever he was accused or threatened. To himself there was an inexhaustible supply of “buts”. It was as if he had some giant, crawling, “but” machine somewhere between the large and small intestines, a machine that was inserted at birth by a Monty-Python doctor who added exigencies and extenuating circumstances and needs for rationalisation and pragmatic innuendoes all over the devious little device. Lizzie back then had mused again that she who understood him so well could not touch or affect or manipulate him: yet he, who understood her so little, always seemed in control of her life. Mum would never have let any man get the better of her, she knew how to keep them guessing and loving it.
There had never been any dearth of men around Mum, a widow with three children and never enough money to scratch herself. How did she do it? The answer was obvious. Gwennie loved everyone, the world was a circus, and she was always the star. Even when things went wrong, as they did frequently, Gwennie was still the star. From one role to another, she moved with panache and poise. Now the cultured widow living in a condemned house in the worst slums of South Melbourne, with no silver, no lace and no roof. Now the naive young girl struggling with an unskilled job to support her darling daughters. Now the woman left by a lover who had taken the little money and the few rings she possessed. And always the loving, warm person who gave and loved joyfully. Gwennie had loved and been loved.
Once upon a time, Lizzie had thought that love was for happily ever after. Mum and Nanna had been all for it. A solid, sensible man. Neither of them had contemplated marriage at her age but they thought she needed to be safe, and it would be nice for her to be protected and supported. For a while, she wondered if that was why Mum had finally agreed when her own good man said, ‘I think we should get married,’ when he was told it would only be for a little while before the rat would win.
But Mum had had plenty of choices. Lizzie was tired of being the manager, the capable one, the one who could sort things out and find a workable solution to everyone else’s problems. She had been tired of running a house and caring for her sisters, the younger children. So she had married. That meant running a house and caring for someone else… No wonder she hated teaching “Clear Thinking”. Her comprehension had not been good. The solid, sensible boy was solid and sensible only as long as he was cared for and supported. He had chosen the girl he thought was capable of making decisions and helping him. It was a sterile match. Sterility wasn’t just childlessness and germ-free instruments. There was one in Lizzie’s hand right now, a germ-free instrument. Peel the spuds, open the packet of frozen, minted peas, separate the almost thawed chops, mix the sauce, rattle for serrated knives and sullen, stainless-steel forks, add the salt, turn on the exhaust fan to remove the ugly smells, sponge up the suds that bilge over onto the stove from the potato pot. That’s it. Dinner is served. Chomp. Gobble. Slurp. That’s it. Now for the dishes. It was almost the same, almost every night. She was peeling the spuds for vichyssoise. She would mint the peas herself. The chops would be cooked in red wine sauce and served with salad nicoise. The bread stick would be swabbed with garlic butter and wrapped in foil, a tasty phallus if ever she’d seen one. The claret would be opened and left to breathe heavily into the air. The husband was doing the same.
So was the bitch, she from next door who was his current “fling”. After coyly accepting a drink, she was now heading for the door in top gear gyrating boobs and bum in all directions. What a love machine! What a fucking bore! Lizzie, playing the frumpy wife, grinned and quickly turned it to a plastic hostess smile while admonishing herself for the vulgarity of the pun and resisting the temptation to upset the regularity of the scene by sharing it with these two robots.
One might do such things, fucking, that is, but one must never say it. Those were the rules of operation or “modus operandi” if one had been to a better public school. One always played by the rules in public. That was the essence of the schooling. She wondered if she should wave a lace wisp of handkerchief as the bitch was propelled slowly to the door and down the drive. Bugger it. She didn’t have a lace wisp of a handkerchief to flutter. Never mind, save it for another time. Perhaps when there is someone to share the joke. Shit! Would there ever be anyone to share the joke?
Funny that no one seemed to see the fear inside her. Not even the other man—the man she must not think about—who had shared the jokes and made her feel so whole. He made it safe to be the same outside as inside her head. With him, what she said was what she felt, thought and was. He liked, he loved, the woman she really was, the woman that Nanna and Mummy had recognised. He had recognised her, loved her and wanted her to go with him. Why oh why had she stayed?
Lizzie had become aware of a silence. Oh shit, he thinks she might suspect about the bitch and is trying to be affectionate. Tweak a breast. Knead a bum. Have another drink. Pick your nose. That wasn’t fair. He didn’t pick his nose, at least not in public. That was just his way of showing her he cared—tweaking the breast and kneading the bum—not picking his nose. He was hovering around the kitchen as she prepared the meal. Chop. Squish. Slurp. Mix. The action was easy. She had come a long way since stuffed marrows and old Joe. Now the man would make “polite conversation” until he became aware that she was not engaged. She knew how faithful he was, didn’t she? She sure did, buster.
She hid her amusement and appeared understanding. If she tuned out the sound, he looked quite grotesque, rather like some walled-up creature from Edgar Allen Poe’s cellar or someone drowning in a glass case. Except, of course, he would have had his nose flattened against the wall or glass. His nose wasn’t flat. She wondered briefly if that was what novelists meant by “apoplectic”. It was a lovely word but she had never been sure of the symptoms. This certainly looked like it. He was very fit and he did jog every day but he was almost spluttering in his irritation. It did seem out of proportion to her silence. Oh, he was annoyed because she wasn’t reacting. He felt ignored. Perhaps she should cry? It just required too much energy, and she couldn’t really be fagged but well, if needs must. Tears it was, then. By concentrating very hard, she could squeeze enough to look dewy-eyed, and if she clenched her mouth, it looked as though she were being brave and putting on a good front. Yes, it must be working because he was calming perceptibly. It won’t be long. Get ready for it. Tweak a breast. Squeeze a bum. Scold gently now. Get another drink.
‘Once upon a time…’ That was what Mum and Nanna and everyone else had thought about their marriage. Handsome, respectable, middle-class boy meets plain girl from dubious social background, falls in love, white wedding and happy-ever-after. Funny how those two women with all their loves, living, poverty, laughter, strength and conniving had both wanted her to settle into middle-class security. Neither of them would have done it. Neither of them did it. At least not until almost the very end when Mum did. In the same church as the girl had married the respectable boy, the mother married a respectable man. Two weddings. “For better or for worse, in sickness and in health till death do us part”—or something like that. For the woman in blue it was mostly sickness, and death was only fifteen months away.
Gwennie moved into her very own house with the gentle man who loved her. In all her fifty-one years, she had never lived in a house she or her family owned and she had lived in many houses. So had her girls though only the eldest really remembered them, the other two had been too young. They probably thought the Housing Commission house was it. Gwennie had thought it was it and a bit. The Housing Commission had allocated it to her when it was almost new and the newness hadn’t worn off for a while. At first, she had been so thrilled with simple things like a whole roof instead of a holey one and a budgie that was kept briefly in a cage instead of pigeons in a no-longer-there roof, kept until they all agreed to leave the cage door open.
Funny little house, Gwennie’s married house… But Lizzie shared her mother’s pride in it. By then she had her own house, but it was never as much fun as Mum’s. Lizzie really was a housewife. Mum was playing mothers and fathers for the first time in her life. Predictably, the main colour themes were blue. Mum spent much time and effort with “the front room” which would house the double bed, joking all the time about probably being there more than in the kitchen. The room looked like the set of a Noel Coward play: Queen Anne Suite (reproduction of course), blue frilly bedspread, deep maroon carpet, crystal on the dressing table and romantic ladies in flowing draperies simpering limpidly from every wall. There were a few small, beautiful pieces. The dressing stool was upholstered in fine tapestry worked carefully and delicately by old Mrs. Berkowitz from the Housing Commission as a wedding gift. A small porcelain figure of a girl glowed translucently. The crystal jewel-bowl held the tiny pearl earrings the girl had brought with her very first month’s salary. The little gold clock with its fine enamelled face ticked softly on the crocheted doily protecting the bedside veneer. In the kitchen was a Wedgewood tea set. In the lounge, some Venetian glass won by Nanna on a quiz show: she had chosen it instead of some electrical appliance that would have been useful. The rest were props, setting the scene for the last act.
When she was first confined to bed, Mum had played the invalid with grace, elan and a lacy bed jacket. She did the “being brave” routine to perfection. So well, in fact, that Lizzie didn’t realise for a while that the fantasy was being devoured by the terrible reality of gnawing, frightening, shit, shit, shit, awful pain. She didn’t realise until the day she heard her mother scream.
A scream full of bewilderment and frustration and gut-tearing fear. A scream that was both acknowledgement of and concession to that creeping, implacable, devouring death-thing that was eating her alive. You let that happen, you bloody God. And expect us to understand. Like shit we understand, you bastard, God, you bastard.
Gwennie had said she wanted twelve months so when she had fifteen she seemed to think it was a good deal. Of course, the last three months didn’t really count. That bloody God of hers was a stingy giver but by then she wasn’t taking any chances of offending Him. She shouldn’t have died. She was needed. There were still things for her to do and say, and the girl needed her. Gwennie knew that. She should not have died. Gwennie was loved. In her heart, Lizzie knew that Mum didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to leave her girl alone at the head of the mortality queue.
Poor Gwennie. She closed her eyes against the pain. That bloody pain. It was gnawing away at her bones like some bloody great rat with its beaky little claws tearing away at a carcass. She was sitting on the pillows clutching her knees to her body rocking, rocking, rocking. The tears dribbled out from under her lashes, balanced precariously and then slowly, slid down the puffy cheeks.
It was the drugs that made them like that. The fine layers of flesh that remained had risen like dough, and she kept expecting it all to collapse each time they gave her an injection. But it didn’t. Perhaps the needles worked like a pump. Perhaps they would just keep on blowing her up like some grotesque party balloon until she exploded and it was all over.
How long would it take? She rocked on the big double bed. If only she could grab that pain, or touch it or press on it or warm it or any bloody thing. It evaded her grasp, hiding just out of reach, like a child hiding in a cubby that adults could look at but were too big to enter. She could cry, threaten or cajole. Still she couldn’t grasp it. So she screamed.
Gwennie screamed because she didn’t know what else to do. And she screamed because she knew it wouldn’t go away. The scream bounced around the wall until she thought it would crack the mirror. It didn’t, of course. Nothing as dramatic as that. The story of her life, nothing was ever truly dramatic—she just made it seem like that sometimes.
The rhythm of her movements was broken. The flaccid arms tightened about her knees, holding them in a firm embrace. Fleetingly, she remembered other embraces and other rhythms but again the pain smothered her thoughts. Now she lived only for those brief respites after the drugs. There had always been intermittent good times. More just recently, of course, as her kids grew up.
She twisted the golden ring on her wedding finger. All her fingers were swollen now, and her ring made a gentle waist in the puffy flesh and a small blue stone glittered coldly. Blue for weddings. She had always loved blue, in clothing, in stones and the summer sky. She wouldn’t last till summer now. The girls would be sad for Christmas. They had given her the clock last year, and now she lived by it. Her hands reached out for it again. Those hands which were so like her rough old Mum’s despite the red varnish.
Was it really another hour before she could have some more of that stuff? Oh God, please make it go away. God, please. She didn’t know what to do. Please. Make it go away. Please. She was rocking again. Rocking. Rocking. She nursed her pain and tried to coax it to sleep. It took a long time.
It was no good blaming Mum. It was bloody God’s fault. If he existed and Lizzie didn’t believe in him anymore anyway. It was all so bloody senseless. And she was scared even more now that she didn’t believe in him. She remembered Paneloux’s second sermon in The Plague, ‘We must believe everything or deny everything. And who, I ask, amongst you would dare to deny everything?’ She was scared and no one even knew about it now that Mum as gone.
Nanna had died, but that was different because Nanna was old and just decided that she had had enough. The last few months with the nuns must have been rather a trial for all concerned because Nanna was bored with living and thought she might as well see what the alternative was like. Lizzie didn’t feel sad when Nanna died, just rather lonely, and she had wondered why Nanna didn’t want to stay with them. She felt so alone when Mum died. It was as though she had been betrayed and abandoned. She was resentful that Mum would do that to her, just go off and leave her all by herself.
When she had called at the house the Sunday before, Gwennie’s man said that she was dying and that he wouldn’t let them hospitalise her. He had forty years’ leave accrued from when he had nothing to do but work. Without knowing it, he said, he’d been saving it for Gwennie. He said she was dying. Lizzie heard it but didn’t comprehend. In the little kitchen of the first house her mother had ever owned, she mixed a drink of egg and milk and Akta-vite, carried it to the bedroom and saw her mother semi-sleeping, semi-conscious. The beautiful eyes were deep in the grey face. Mum’s eyes always looked like that when she was sick. The pain was bad; her daughter knew that. That bloody treatment seemed almost worse. The soft black hair was going and that bloody wig screamed at them both from the dressing table. Never again, for plays at school, or any cosmetic purpose, would Lizzie be able to handle false hair without screaming inside her head. What a spiteful bloody God to do this to someone so lovely. If it were true and she was his creation, why the hell would he want to fuck it all up like that? There was no sense in anything. Softly, she touched the arm that had been flung out to ward off the invisible rat that was inexorably eating away, eating away, at the marrow of existence, and the eyelids flickered weakly. There was a brief moment of recognition.
‘That’s my daughter.’
Lizzie had wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t. She knew that if she acknowledged it was bad, it would be and as long as she didn’t say it out aloud or even think it in words it would be all right. Mum was very sick. She needed nourishment. The bent, invalid straw was placed gently on the dry parched lips, and the poor tired head was supported to facilitate a few sips of milk. It wasn’t a breast, and it wasn’t enough.
Mum died two days later.
What a bitch!
She shouldn’t have died. She was needed. There were still things for her to do and say but less than two years after the wedding, everyone was back in church for Gwennie. Happy the bride the sun shines on and at rest the dead the rain falls on. At rest? Crap! There was no soft bed and no blue quilt in that hard little uncompromising box. No lace bed-jacket either. At least Lizzie didn’t think so. She had refused to look at that thing in the middle of the aisle. The organ played again, there were flowers again and candles again. People cried again and prayed again. But she wouldn’t kiss her mother again, ever. That’s what funerals were like. The absolute conformity of a funeral that was just like everyone else’s funeral. A husband, children, friends, flowers, a proper coffin. A proper funeral. Gwennie was nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be felt, nowhere to love her girl and make it all better. Gwennie was gone. Oh, shit, Lizzie missed Gwennie and Nanna. She hated being the one left behind. If they had really cared about her then at least one of them should have stayed with her instead of buggering off, leaving her neatly sewn up in the marriage strands. She supposed she knew they meant it for the best but she wasn’t secure, she was secured, procured. The nightmare of that other night kept slithering back.
She had thought it was just another dinner with the boss and his wife. You bloody man, you, how could you do that to me? You really thought you could swap me off to that old lecher but you were mistaken, playing your much more sophisticated version of “you show me yours and I’ll show you mine” than the kids play behind the shelter shed. Except that you miscalculated, because I’d never played that game at the convent and I didn’t want to play the grown up version either and that really screwed things up and not the way you all intended it would. What an innocent. What a fool. Mum and Nanna never told me about swaps. I wonder if they played. I bet they didn’t. No one would want to swap them away—not Mum who was beautiful and Nanna who was something different but just as good as beautiful. So I didn’t know about the rules until the game was on. I thought they were an entertaining couple. I knew you were attracted to her. I thought he liked me too. That made it harmless fun, I thought. Foolish virgin. Well, foolish anyway. The last chaste wife left on planet earth who thought that promises and vows were meant to be for real, who thought that wife swapping like venereal disease and the road toll was something to read about in the Sunday Press, but could never happen to me. This was the bright one!? Oh, brother.
That night in the restaurant with the three of them all watching her watching them. All knowing that she knew and wondering how she was going to react. Her husband, the other man, the other man’s wife and her husband’s wife.
As the other two danced together, she sat with the man and refused to watch or see her husband. If she didn’t see it, it wouldn’t be there, this scene would not be really happening. Her husband would not swap her like that. He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.
She smiled at the waiter who materialised at their table like an ominous Cheshire cat and then disappeared back into the dimness all round her. The light of the candle on the table glowed and reflected in the eyes of this strange man who had happily delivered his young wife to someone else’s husband and who now expected this woman—it was her!—to complete the transaction by going to him, that other man. It was a muddle, a dreadful muddle, surely?
She wasn’t playing. She would pretend she didn’t know the game, and then it would be all right. It would all stop if she didn’t look or didn’t admit it was happening. It couldn’t happen to her. Not to Gwennie’s girl. It was impossible that that reality should mean he would ever offer her to someone else as part of an exchange. People just didn’t do that to other people. Not now. Not here. Not outside magazines and films. Not in reality. They didn’t. He couldn’t. But he had. If she opened her eyes and acknowledged it, he had. So she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t look and then it would all go away.
But the stranger at her table didn’t go away. Her husband danced with the stranger’s wife and the stranger held her hand until she pulled it away. He fondled her leg until she moved it away. She could feel her control slipping away as the night and the situation began to invade her.
Yes, she was being proffered to this stranger, and at this final humiliation and defeat, her body reacted. So she went away. Ran to the car. Sobbed at the lock. Twisted the keys. Trod on the pedals. Tyres screamed with her. The engine gasped in her chest. She felt it thrusting through the darkness. Her fists were clenched. It was taking her as it pleased. She felt helpless. She was submitting. Until the car broke through the bridge. Then almost too late, she rebelled. She swung on the handle of the door and threw herself out, out of the cage of the car into the freedom of water.
The action still surprised her. She had thought the strength had disappeared with the dreams. Passivity means weakness. They had all abandoned her. Even Mum. Well, damn her dead eyes! Damn her! Damn us all! So why was she still fighting? Mummy! Mummy! You bitch! You stupid, bloody bitch! Mummy! Mummy! Wake up! Wake up, please. Come and get me. Please. Please. Shit, do something! You are my mother. I need you! Oh, Mummy, please!?!?!?!?!
But Mum did not come and then Lizzie knew she was on her own.
There are bars. I wonder why there are bars. They are white and so is everything else. Way down in front of me are two toe-lumpy bumps which are white too. There is a face there somewhere. Yes, and there’s another. I think the mouths are talking, but the eyes aren’t saying much. They are watching something. A needle. It’s going into an arm and it almost hurts. I suppose that means it’s my arm. But they’re not my eyes, and it’s not my mouth. Perhaps they are my toes.
No more certainties. Only maybe. Might be. Perhaps. For a while. We change. We grow. Forget it. Water under the bridge.
Water. I am back in this lovely water again. I knew it would be gentle, friendly, tender and welcoming. The water likes me. I like it too. At least, I think it likes me. No more certainties. Just the water all about me, folding me, wrapping me around, caressing my body. So soft. So soft. My fingers are slipping through the surface. So soft. Like Nanna’s skin. I’m not crying anymore.
The water flows around me. It supports me, frees me. This is freedom. I can twirl and curve and my hair is part of the tide, a living, growing, dancing thing. It plays around my face and fans out before my eyes as the water ripples. All about me is the earth in suspension. Brown. Grey. Melt into it. Feel nothing. Nothing can touch me now. I am nothing. He did that. Watch the swaying fronds move gently with the ripples. Swaying and dancing. Grey satin ripples. Swaying together. Smiling. Not at me. Don’t know I’m here. I am here in all this darkness and this darkness doesn’t like me. I don’t like the dark. There. I said it. Mummy. Mummy. Please come. Please come, Mummy. Mummy, I’m scared. Someone is screaming. It’s horrible. Stop the screaming, Mummy. Please stop me. I’m screaming, and it scares me. Mummy, please come. I can’t stop the screaming coming out. Mummy!
She’s there in the darkness dancing away from me, leaving me here to walk home from the station alone. The doors are closed tight. I can’t get in there. I told them I hate working late. It’s quiet. There’s the other lady from the train. I can keep with her and then I won’t be frightened. I hear her footsteps but mine are much louder because of these silly high heels. She’s walking faster too. Oh, she’s turning right. She’s not going my way after all. I’ll just walk more quickly but I won’t run. I won’t run. There is no one behind me. How do I know? I wouldn’t hear someone in sneakers. He could catch up to me before I knew he was following. If I look back, he’ll be there. Don’t look. Just walk. Don’t run.
There’s thick fog in my head and my throat. I’m hot all inside but my skin is creepy cold and my legs are slowing down. What if they stop? They are stopping. Legs! Move. Walk. Run. I want to run but they’ve stopped. They’ve stopped. There is a waterfall in my head. Legs! Run. I can’t see very clearly. Legs! Run. It’s so dark.
There’s someone there. Mum? The man called Ahmed? It is you. Oh, you’ve come. I didn’t think anyone ever would.
Now I’m safe. You will look after me, care for me, want me, perhaps even love me. I wonder if you will. I wonder if you will. I’ll pretend to love you if you will. Shall we dance? I love to dance. This floor is so smooth, gleaming soft and golden in the gentle light of the candles and lamps. Your eyes are so brown and dark. I won’t look. We’ll just slip down into the music. It takes us lovingly, and we sway together as it folds, swathes and meshes us.
I feel your hand on my naked shoulders left vulnerable by the drape of my gown. Your hand is strong, hard and golden. I want to touch you, feel if you are vulnerable. But you’re not. That is a certainty. I think that is strength and freedom. I let my hair drift across your hand so it can caress you with the music and the lights. The flames are dancing gently with us. Even the night parts to our touch and closes back when we have slipped by. Such a lack of effort, energy and friction. Just fold together and let the music fuse us with the night and the candles. Night that is forever. Music that never stops. White, glowing candles standing tall and confident, sure of their beauty and strength.
A white drift is following me. I glimpse it as I spin, like the aftermath of sparklers on Guy Fawkes’ night. It is my veil. Gossamer. Frothy. It follows me in the darkness, past the candles, through the shafts of stained colour, past the cross of a god’s broken dream, to the altar. The priest is waiting. He has tried to cover his blackness but I see it sneaking out at his wrists and between the holes in the fragile, insubstantial overlay. Yes. The priest is in black, in league with a spiteful god. Here comes the offering. He does not need it. He won’t use it. It’s a hollow gesture, this sacrifice. It is a velvet-eyed calf with ivory buds just peeping through its crown. It is a timid, trembling goat that bleats for its innocence. It is Iphigenia. See she comes through the soaring arch that pretends to point her way to heaven. A sallow sun shines through blood-red hearts, virginal blues and sterile, golden lilies. The glass is cold. The figures have immortality without life. The virgin has borne her child without love.
The soldiers’ sweat and lust attack the king’s daughter as she moves falteringly towards the priest. Father, cries Iphigenia. Help me, Father. Please, Father, forget the wind. Love me, Father. I love you. I want to love you. Father. Help me, Father.
The father’s dream is broken. His child is given up for others now. Iphigenia is on her cross. Soldiers dice. A child dies. The earth shivers and the wind blows. My veil flutters and my flowers are thrown to be gathered as an omen. Always the uncertainty. Always the search for something to stop the fear. He loves me. He loves me not. Will the flowers tell me? Search for one that gives the answer I want. There are fields of them. The earth pushes them out to be plucked or trodden on. Soldiers trample them. So do children and goats and calves. I cut the flowers and watch them die slowly. See them everywhere. All around. On altars and tables and desks and graves, in urns and vases and glasses and pots, in homes and churches and schools and taverns.
In the tavern. No. I don’t want to be here. I don’t like this place. Move legs. Walk away. Obey me. Run. Go home. They are trapped and I am held at the table again. Eating bread. Eating flesh. Drinking water. Drinking wine. A man in black attends us. Your eyes are so dark I don’t want to look. If I look, I shall see you and then I’ll see her. You and her. If I don’t look it won’t be there. The music pushes past me and envelops you both. Swaying. The dark silk ripples on her and flows around you. The gibing candle lights a path which my eyes must follow. You are dancing without me. I am here in the darkness, I can’t even cry out. My mouth just won’t do it. Anyway, there’s no one to call for, no one to come, no one at all. Mum and Nanna left and I sent Ahmed away. There’s just me now with all my uncertainties. I don’t like them or you or her or anyone anymore. You don’t love me. You don’t even like me.
I think the water does. It’s so gentle and free. Water can’t be hurt, scared, labelled, given away or destroyed. It eludes. It changes and slips away. Then it falls somewhere new. When you think you have it fast it just slips away. I like that. You don’t understand that. That’s why you have the bars, the needle and silent eyes. They are all there again. You wonder if I have been dreaming. Perhaps. I’m not sure. You wonder if I am awake now. Maybe. I don’t know. You wonder if I am better. I think so. In fact, I think I am good. I think I am clever. I think I’ll find my chance and slip away again when you don’t see me in the darkness. I think I’ll be awake. But I might be dreaming. There are no more certainties.
But when she woke there were some certainties for Lizzie. Somehow, she knew that all the dreams and all the poetry dried up that night. Like everything else in her life it had never really developed, never reached fruition or amounted to anything much. The story of her life. Shit, she was sounding more and more like Mum these days. Lizzie lived but Gwennie’s girl seemed finally gone. There was just a frightened shell of a frightened woman.
She remembered the day she found the lump in her breast and the thought of death. She had never doubted that it would be cancer. The room had been warm, and the late afternoon sun was gentle as she closed her eyes and prepared to drift off into calmness and the quiet. Her fingers slid softly across her breast. She was alert instantly. There was a lump. In her right breast. Her fingers went back, checked again, ran away from it, but again returned. There was a lump. In her right breast. The panic began somewhere in her gut and welled up. There was a lump. She was not imagining it. It was there, small, round, hand. The skin near it was tender, Fuck, fuck, fuck. There was a lump. Then she was trembling, and the panic was taking hold. Mum had found a lump. Mum had died. Now Lizzie had found a lump. This was not a story or a dream or a nightmare—well, it was a nightmare. There was a lump in her breast that could only mean cancer. Oh fuck! She had cancer. Like Mum. She was going to die.
There were tears streaming down her face and her body felt hot and sweaty. What should she do? What could she do? She needed someone. She needed her mother but her mother was dead. Her beautiful mother, Gwennie whom everyone loved, was dead. She died of cancer. And it was horrible. She died without her hair, and she was cold in that bloody coffin when they put her in that hole in the ground. Lizzie was there and she had not stopped them. Could not stop them. Mum was dead and cold in the ground. She died of cancer. Now Lizzie had a lump, and it would be cancer, and she would be dead and cold in the dark, damp ground.
This wasn’t a play or a story, It was real. This is how Gwennie must have felt, and she hadn’t been able to do anything about it. This was really what it felt like to be powerless. What could she do about this insidious rat eating away at her life, her inside, her being?
Fuck. What am I going to do?
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat with her head in her hands, trying to think, trying to be calm. She heard the man moving around in the next room. With her whole body trembling, she walked in to see him. ‘I’ve just found a lump in my breast.’ She was holding on to her calmness as tightly as could be. She must not let the panic out or it would take her over.
‘What the fuck do you want?’
‘I’ve just found a lump in my breast. Please. I think I need some help.’
‘Stop your bloody play acting. Get out of here.’
‘I’ve just found…’
‘I don’t care what you’ve found. Get out of here. Just go away and die if that’s what you’ve got in mind. Just like your bloody mother. Die and see if anyone cares. Get out of here.’
She went back to the bed, covered her face and then the tears came with great shaking sobs. The panic was out. It took over, and it held her for the next couple of hours, until, exhausted, she fell asleep. It grabbed her each time she woke in the darkness. It waited in the darkness and silently, silently, it took hold of her, it violated her and she screamed and screamed—but silently.
By morning, the panic was sated and it rolled away from her listlessness. She dressed, rang the office to cancel a meeting and drove to her doctor’s office. He knew her family history—well, at least as much as was relevant to her care. He had trained her in breast examination, insisted that she check her breasts regularly, refused to renew prescriptions for birth control without a full check. Now, she faced him across his desk. Just another patient with a lump in her breast. Lizzie, whoever she was, seemed to be disappearing already.
‘It doesn’t look good.’
Lizzie could feel tears coming. Why couldn’t she do this calmly?
‘Now, don’t panic.’
A little late, Doctor.
‘It could be harmless, something benign, a cyst.’
You don’t believe that. I can see it in your eyes.
‘Wait here a minute. I’ll get you an appointment with a specialist.’
Wait. Yes, I’ll wait. For how long? For how long will this thing inside me wait?
‘He’ll see you straightaway. Here’s the address. Are you OK to drive?’
‘Yes, I’m fine.’
Lying bitch. You are not fine. You have cancer, and this man knows it and you know it.
‘Go straight away. He is expecting you.’
‘I thought it took weeks to get in to see a specialist?’ she needled.
‘Well, he’s a friend of mine. He’ll see you immediately. Now, don’t worry. It may be nothing.’
Yeah! That’s why he’ll see me immediately.
Once again, she lay on a cold sheet while a doctor prodded and pushed around her breasts and under her arms and at the base of her throat. He was gentle and quiet, and Lizzie did her best to remove herself from what was happening. Then she dressed and sat across another desk.
This time, she heard, ‘I guess you know this is probably serious?’
Oh fuck. Oh shit. Why can’t you tell me I’m a hysterical woman and there’s nothing to worry about?
‘I’d like you in tomorrow for surgery.’
‘Tomorrow?’ she repeated stupidly.
‘I think you are likely to be facing the need for quick action. We’ll need to do an exploratory biopsy but all the signs are that it’s malignant.’
‘You mean cancer?’
A pause. Then, ‘Yes, I think—only think mind—until we do the biopsy—that it could be cancer.’
‘So, this biopsy. It will show what it is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘And if it is cancer, if it is malignant, what then?’
‘This is only my opinion and it’s not sure at this stage, but you may be facing a mastectomy. In some cases, there’s no need to remove the whole breast, but frankly, there is a swelling under your arm and it is possible that the lymph is affected.’
‘A mastectomy?’
‘It is a possibility. You should prepare yourself for that possibility. Of course, I may be quite wrong.’
‘But you don’t think you are?’
A shrug, ‘Until the biopsy no one could be sure.’
There was a long pause. He sat in silence and let Lizzie try to take in what he was saying. She looked up, ‘What if I go home and just pretend it isn’t there? What if I just do that?’ she asked.
‘Then you will die.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said impatiently, ‘But everyone dies. I’ll die eventually whether it’s cancer or not. If I just went home, when would I die?’
‘I’m guessing without the tests.’
‘So guess!’ she demanded.
‘Maybe two years but more likely two months.’
She gasped. ‘Two months? Only two months?’
‘I’m guessing, but I don’t like the swelling under your arm.’
There was silence again. He waited.
‘So, what’s Plan B, doctor?’ Lizzie said in resignation.
‘You go into hospital tomorrow morning. I’ll do a biopsy tomorrow afternoon. I suggest you have another surgeon accompany me for a second opinion. If it is indeed malignant, I could do the mastectomy immediately.’
‘Immediately? Like tomorrow?’
‘If I am wrong, you will come out of surgery having had a worrying time. If I’m correct, and the other surgeon agrees, you’ve only had one trip to theatre. However, if you prefer, I can let you know the results and you could have the mastectomy separately.’
‘Oh shit, Oh shit. Oh shit.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Where do I find another surgeon by tomorrow?’
‘You can get another referral from your own doctor. He’ll ensure that it is not a collaborator, that you do, in fact get two opinions.’
Silence again. Lizzie could fell the tears coming, and they were insistent this time. He rose and put his hand on her shoulder.
‘It is a shit. But you’ve taken quick action. Don’t lose courage now. I’ll just see what I can arrange.’
This is a nightmare. A bloody nightmare. It can’t be happening. Surely, I’ll wake up and it will all be a mistake, a stupid piece of a mistake. Please let it be a mistake. Please.
But it wasn’t a mistake. Then she was on some sort of macabre conveyor belt passing through certain stops and at the mercy of other people who did what they had to do and passed her along the queue to the next person. It was a nightmare. But it was real. Only shards of memories remained.
She was being admitted to hospital. She stood almost naked, wrapped in a crackling cotton gown. She was weighed, measured and tagged. A young woman arranged her in front of an X-ray machine. Hands this way. Hands that way. Stand like this. Turn like that. Breathe. Don’t breathe. Whirrs. Clicks. Now, we must do it again. ‘Don’t do it too often. You’ll give me cancer.’ A look of shock on the young woman’s face. She thinks I don’t know.
One doctor. Two doctors. Three nurses. Four.
Anaesthetist. Pathologist. Wheel her through the door.
Lights. Lots of lights.
Of course, this is theatre.
Chorus in blue. Stars in white.
Cadaver on trolley, all blood and gore.
Fear, fear and then some more.
Masks and eyes. Some familiar. Some strange. Voices. Lights. Nothing. Waking. I didn’t know I was asleep, Move gently. Hand up to chest Pat, pat. One breast. Pat, pat. Two breasts. Two breasts! It was all a mistake. There are two breasts. Exhale. Exhale. Now back to sleep. It was all a mistake. Serious face. Two serious faces. Doctors. Make a happy face for doctors. Two breasts. All a mistake.
Not a mistake. Serious faces. You said you would take it, take my breast, if it was bad. You didn’t take it. So I’m OK. All a mistake, right? Needed another pathology test? This one wasn’t sure? Not sure? Then it must be OK. Unusual form. Extremely malignant? Go back tomorrow and take my breast? No, No. Screaming, Screaming. You said it would go if it were bad, and it’s here. It was all a mistake. Screaming.
A sweet faced young sister. Washing me. All warm and soapy like Nanna used to do it. Wash my back and turn me over. Wash my front. Pat my breast so very gently. A quiet voice and a tender smile, ‘Bye, bye, booby.’ And the sheet is drawn up over my breast. I don’t look again. ‘Bye, bye, booby.’ All gone. All gone.
Pain. But this time it’s done. I’m OK. It’s all over. All over.
Friends. An amazing number of friends and flowers. ‘Looks like a funeral parlour, Kiddo!’ Cards. Balloons. Balloons with nipples and poems.
A good friend of ours found a lump in her tit.
So the doc. whipped it off her, lickety split.
Now her décolletage
Is halved—quelle dommage!
But we love her and don’t give a shit.
Will you still be able to float? Or will you keel over to one side? Hey, remember all those statues of Mary at school? She always had one hand over her breast with blue drapes and stuff. Maybe Mary had a mastectomy?
It aches but I’m OK. It wasn’t so bad. Now I just need to get out of here and forget it and get on with my life. The man has been friendly. Maybe things will be better now. It’s done. It’s done.
Chemotherapy. No. You didn’t say anything about chemotherapy. That wasn’t part of the deal. You said surgery. I’ve done that. No. Nothing more. Nothing more. No. It’s done. It’s all over. Please.
‘The lymph was badly infected. This is very dangerous. We took all the affected nodes, and we think we may have got it but we aren’t sure. Chemotherapy attacks anywhere in the body where it might have spread. Six months treatment; then we can tell.’
You mean, even if I have chemotherapy, it might not be gone? It might still be there? Don’t you know? What if I have it, and it doesn’t work? You must know. Tell me, you fuckers, for shit’s sake, tell me. Will it work? You must know. You must know whether it will work or not. I can’t bear not knowing. Don’t you understand that? Don’t you get it?
Another hospital. Big. Hundreds of walking dead. They all have cancer. I can’t make eye contact. The eyes are all dead. All dead. I will not be like you. I am not going to die. Not yet. Not like this. I will not. I will not die like this.
My first chemotherapy treatment. What will happen to me? What do you do? Does my hair all fall out immediately? Tell me what you are going to do. Tell me, you fuckers, tell me. I stay in the hospital, this hospital, now? You didn’t tell me that. I haven’t even brought a toothbrush. I want to go home. I don’t want to stay. What are you going to do to me? Injections. A hospital gown. Nighttime. Fear. I am all alone. Gwennie! Gwennie, where are you? Mum. Nanna. How can you let this happen to me? Help me.
Morning. More waiting. What happens next? Please, don’t just leave me here. Tell me what happens next? A young male nurse giving out prescriptions. What is this for? What is going to happen to me? Tell me, please, tell me. You are sitting down. You will tell me. Each month for six months I come back here, but I don’t have to stay—it’s just for a day every couple of weeks. Blood tests. Examination. The drugs through a drip in my arm. What happens? I might feel nauseous—probably I will feel nauseous. I must stay positive. That really helps—not just how I will feel but it can help me survive. Stay positive. Live one day at a time. No one knows what is going to happen. You, my male nurse, could fall and break a leg tomorrow. You don’t know. You and I must live one day at a time. That’s what life is all about. Stay positive. Live one day at a time. Live. I am going to live. I will not die like this, not now. I’m not ready yet.
More waiting. Into a wheelchair. Why? Into a wheelchair clutching this skimpy hospital gown around me. Through the public halls, no privacy, just a disease, not a person, Park me in a corridor next to other wheelchairs. Waiting. Waiting. A chair beside me. My male nurse with his leg in a support. You were late after talking to me and you fell. You might have a broken ankle. Oh fuck, that’s funny. I’m sorry. It’s not funny but I can’t wipe the smile off my face. Worth it for the smile? You are a good young male nurse, you know that?
Months of treatment interspersed with desperation.
Won’t you help me, please help me? I am scared and I want to live. I don’t want to die.
Keep working. That will help. Keep working. That will help. Keep working. Going bald, losing my hair, becoming a nude-nut, whatever the fuck you want to call it.
‘Oh that,’ the oncologist shrugs. ‘Nothing. I see it bothers you but most women don’t mind. They just get on with it. Wear a wig or a scarf or something.’
‘THEY DON’T CARE’? DO YOU EVER LOOK, EVER OPEN YOUR EYES WHEN YOU WALK AROUND THE CORRIDORS? THEY CARE. THEY BLOODY CARE. MOST OF THEM ARE JUST TOO NICE AND YOU MAKE THEM TOO POWERLESS TO TELL YOU THEY CARE. LOOK OUT THERE. LOOK AT THEM!’ She was shouting.
He was shocked.
I can’t wear the wig, can’t bear to touch it. Memories of Gwennie, my beautiful mother, and her blue bedroom, her beautiful hair all gone. Just the wig on the dressing table, I cannot wear a wig. Walking down the street. Bald. Head covered with a scarf but it is windy. Scarf comes off. Two boys look and laugh. Can’t sleep. The drugs are doing this. In the night, wander around the paddocks like a mad woman. Scream. Swear.
‘If anyone is there…’ I am not going to die, Do you hear me? I am not going to die. Won’t someone help me, please?
The agapanthus are in flower outside my bedroom window and in the rain, the drops hang from the blue pendants. When his car comes in, the lights set the drops glistening. The agapanthus will die soon. I will not. I will not.
An older woman visits one day when despair has taken over. ‘I can’t do this, Betty. I can’t go on.’ A stern look. ‘Yes, you can. You just bloody have to, you can’t go back now. You’re half way into the desert. No point in giving up.’ The only time I ever heard her swear.
The man wants to sell the house. Take his money and run. Why do I cling on? Why do I want more time in my house, with my horses and trees and paddocks and garden?
He hits me again because he wants to go but he can’t take the initiative. I know that, ‘You’re a freak,’ he says. ‘Who would want you now?’
I’m going crazy. In a rage, I up end furniture, break a window, ‘Help me. Help me. Help me!’ I know he can’t. He hits me again, My rage is all-powerful. Now I could truly destroy him.
‘If you ever do that to me again, if you ever hit me again, even once, I shall kill you. Not when you are looking; I’ll get you when you are asleep, but I’ll get you, you bastard, if you ever hit me again!’
I mean it. I think he knows I mean it. He never hits me again. He is afraid because I am crazy. I am crazy. But I will not die.
I keep working. It helps. And I need the money. Bills for the hospital, for medicine, for doctors. I hear the story of one woman who thought she was dying. She borrowed thousands of dollars from the bank and travelled the world, doing all the things she could never afford. Then she didn’t die, and she owed a lot of money. I am travelling around the country, talking to lots of women’s groups.
‘Check regularly. Take rapid action. Try not to die.’
Tell them over and over again, in newspapers, on television. Talk about it. Don’t die in secret.
Fighting with the doctors and hospital administrators. Don’t treat us like this, we are intelligent human beings. Talk to us. Tell us what you know about our bodies because it’s our information not just yours. The sixth treatment, so now what? You still don’t know if I am going to live or die? What sort of fucking science is this that you practise? Anytime in the next five years. Wait and see. Take it a day at a time. Don’t slip in the corridor. Don’t die. I will not die.
My hair is growing back again. First, it is just stubble, then it is a short haircut. Never again complain about “a bad hair day”. Any hair is good. I am human again. They can re-construct the breast. What does that mean, not silicone or something? No. Take my spare roll of fat from my gut and take it up to make a “bump under my jumper”. It won’t be pretty but it means not worrying about being lopsided, not worrying about a prosthesis. Do it. They draw lines on me as though I am a side of beef going to be butchered.
Oh shit. This is painful, so painful. It hurts more than it did having one removed. Oh shit, what if I die next month and I have been through this for nothing? Oh shit, it hurts. It hurts.
Invitations to travel to the US and Europe. Stop whinging. Do it. The decision is made; the house will be sold, my beautiful house, my horses, my trees and garden, the smells, the sun on the grass, the agapanthus that bloom every year. All gone. I asked the bank to lend me enough money to buy it from him. They won’t. It is all gone. My beautiful house. All gone, like Ahmed.