I do not wet the bed now; at least not that: though soon, I dare say, the time will come when I do. I dread the day. I do not want to be an old woman sitting in a chair, wearing nappies, nursed by the salt of the earth. It seems unjust; not what Lucy and Benjamin meant at all; rolling about in their unwed bed, year after year, moved by a force which clearly had nothing to do with commonsense or anyone’s quest for happiness: until, their mission apparently accomplished, they rolled apart and went their separate ways, assisted by Butt and Sons, Solicitors.
I do not want to be an incontinent old lady. I would rather die. I feel today, my elbow throbbing and my toe swelling, that the time for dying will be quite soon. On Thursdays I go down to the Social Security offices, stand in a queue, and draw the money which keeps me for a further week. It should be possible for a postal draft to be sent weekly and myself to cash it at the local post office, but I do not like to make the request. I am an ex-con, and habit dies hard of not causing trouble to, let alone demanding one’s rights of, those in authority.
Those in authority, at any rate, in that strange grey world of bars and keys which I have inhabited, where cause and effect works in an immediate way, and the stupid are in charge of the intelligent, and each wrong-doer carries on his poor bowed shoulders the weight of a hundred of the worthy – from prison visitors to the Home Secretary – whose living is made, indirectly, out of crime, or sin, or financial failing, or criminal negligence: or, as with me, the madness of believing that I was right, and society wrong. Who did I think I was? I, Praxis Duveen.
Madness, I say. Today, certainly, it seems like madness. It’s raining. I can see water seeping beneath the door, and have not the strength to fetch one of my cheap, bright, non-absorbent towels to sop it up. Damp stains the stone floor: I feel a dark stain of wretchedness creeping up to the very edges of that part of my mind, my being, which I usually manage to keep inviolate. The part which is daily reborn with gladness, excitement and gratitude to God (or whatever you call it) because the world exists and is so full of interest and possibility: a part of me which I associate, rightly or wrongly, with the Praxis of the very early years, who would run happily into the waves with shoes and socks on to see what would happen, meet with a slap or two, and do it again the next day, unafraid.
Praxis, protected by parental love. While it lasted. Paradise was there, then snatched away.
Children who have been hurt, grow up to hurt. This I know. I knew it, but was helpless in the knowledge. I shouted and screamed, attempted murder or faked suicide, in my children’s presence: conducted the dark side of my erotic nature beneath their startled gaze, careless of the precipice I opened up beneath their feet. I, who guarded them from the fleas of strange dogs, and nasty sights at the pictures, and brushed their hair with loving care. Yes, I did, and so did you, and you: paid back to them what mother did to you.
I remember clearly that early sense of fear and desolation of which all later fears and desolations are mere shadows. And I handed it on to them: this extreme of terror and horror; the ultimate standard by which they must judge the traumas of their own lives, and will hardly feel alive if they do not attain, and so strive to attain for ever. The shrieks of generations growing louder, not softer, as the decades pass.
I am ashamed of it: as ashamed of that as of anything I have done: and bewildered as to why I feel compelled to do it. The domestic row existed, I could almost believe, in order to distress the children.
Perhaps I am dead, and this is my punishment? To believe I am still alive, and live as a useless old woman in a Western industrialised society? There cannot be much worse a punishment. Unless it be to live as a young woman in the East, and see your children die from starvation: or worse, watch them grow up sour, undersized and crippled by curable diseases.
I touch my elbow to see if I am alive. I am.