herself. It hadn’t taken them long, had it. It hadn’t taken them three bloody years.
She sat down and asked him, quite formally, to sit. He tried not to look at her. He was just starting to speak when the door opened and a man’s blond head peered round and said, ‘Sorry!’ before withdrawing.
David started again. ‘I’ve come to see you about Amanda.’
She nodded distantly. He imagined the shape of her belly under her smock, and his hands remembered the feel of her skin, stretched tight and silky-smooth. It was impossible that he should be speaking to her like this – in another man’s house. He had to close his eyes to steady himself and tell himself with all his concentration, ‘She is a bitch and I don’t care about her. She is nothing to me.’ His hands, clenched on the arms of the chair, were sweating horribly. He wondered where Amanda was. It would be easier if he could see her.
‘I’m stopping work. Given in my notice. I want to – you to – I want you to let me have Amanda. I’ll look after her in the days too. You can see her – but I want her. It’s only fair. You can see that.’ Blurted out, not like any of the speeches he had planned. He was burning up. What was it? He didn’t even know what it was that was sending waves of hot panic beating through his flesh.
Elizabeth seemed composed. She spoke in a low voice. ‘Look, I’ve got something to tell you, David, and I should have told you before. I’ve been putting it off because I didn’t want to upset you. But there’s nothing else I can do, I’m afraid. I didn’t –’ She faltered, and he suddenly realized that far from being composed she too was terrified, on the edge of tears. Her voice dropped even lower and he had to crouch forward to hear her. ‘When I moved in with Mark he guessed something which I’d never thought of. He hadn’t really seen her before, you see. But when he saw Amanda – properly – he guessed.’ She came to a complete stop. David was paralysed. The ‘WHAT?’ of rage inside him could not come out, and lodged in his throat like a brick. At last she went on.
‘It’s the hair, you see. It’s so unusual. It would have been such a coincidence. And yours and mine both brown . . .’
Noise. Of roaring. Inside a furnace roaring up with a huge burning lion maw to swallow into red heat.
As it subsided she’d been talking on ‘ . . . because I didn’t, honestly, it never entered my head; he said, well, you can prove it. So he took her to the doctor’s and had a blood test.’
Roaring again, blocking her out. Red coming up before the eyes darkening to black. The white speaking senseless face blotted out, then hanging like a puppet gibbering before him. The mouth went on opening and closing, the face contorting, as he watched. She was crying. She was talking. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, David. I didn’t know, I promise you. You can – if you want you can see her – Mark won’t mind – if you want to see her sometimes.’
Without knowing how or where the strength came from he got out of the house, Elizabeth following him and crying at him all the time. At the door she caught his arm and he pushed her back, and stumbled down the steps. She shrank back into the hallway, staring at him. As he turned on to the pavement the corner of his eye was seared by a flash of white hair at the bedroom window.
He had never seen Amanda again. Except secretly, through fences. And the schoolteacher was right. Carry on like that and he’d turn into one of those perverts, be no better than them. Frightening a little girl at the school gate, with the ugly exposure of his crippling love.
Weds. morning
I am telling stories. In a chipboard cupboard of a room six floors up a cement column, with hot dry air and nylon sheets. The room is so full of electricity that I have adapted to walking slowly, avoiding contacts. My hair crackles, the dry skin on my face is peeling. My lip bleeds.
I am here, not there. There are the twins, Paul and Penny, giggling crying slavering slopping their food sucking their thumbs. Paul sobs in his sleep. Penny moans. My babies who have sucked my breasts and grown in my flesh, pieces of me, my belly my heart.
I am sitting six floors up with a window over the motorway to hills; a five-star view in a one-star room. Snow. Total snow, not London snow. Snow on road ditch hill tree roof cloud car field. I am not –
Not a diary not a journal. Not Marion, not a sniff or spit or print of her. In my cement tower (once doubtless white as an ivory but now yellowing grey as decayed teeth, a tower for my times, the days of ivory – like the golden age – being gone) I sit. Sit, wait, woman in a tower. Like Mariana in her moated grange. No, Rapunzel, gone bald. Stuck up a tower for good.
No games. Here. Nylon sheets, lemon. Two blankets, off white. Nylon quilted bedspread, pink floral. Grey fleck carpet. Woodchip off-white walls. Fitted white-wood wardrobe and shelves, white washbasin, and mirror. Bedside coffee table (supporting lamp) of such generous proportions that this exercise of arm and pen is possible. I sit on the floor under the window, back against the bed, legs outstretched beneath the table. Writing on a new block of A4 ruled feint (wide).
Me. No Penny no Paul No Ruth No Vi no Gareth. Me.
Yes, inescapably me. Not Marion, she says. Not a stiff or– But her sniffs and spits are all over David and Amanda. She has pummelled him into shape – hasn’t she? With her hammy fists, he’s moulded and sticky as dough, paddled with the prints of her flat-edged fingers. Listen.
‘He began to long for a child. Not knowingly, but with a dull subconscious pang of loss.’ He didn’t know (she says). But Marion knows. Mother knows what’s wrong before you know yourself. She names the pain. She identifies it, telling herself that thus it can be remedied, later in the story. Suggesting to herself – comforting herself – deluding herself again – that things follow on, make sense, have remedies.
Perhaps she wanted a good wallow. Nothing like someone else’s troubles. Liberally doused with ketchup, with ‘slow burning love’. Great towering passions, in red and black cloaks. She doesn’t feel secure unless she thinks they’re there.
Instead of real things. Little things, that lurk and move quick and don’t make sense. They resist explanation. They won’t stand still to have metaphors hung round their necks like mayoral chains. Quick, dart, lurk. They’ve gone.
Marion. Whatever she writes. She might as well stop now.
Fri. 7
Snow. More snow every day. Many roads are blocked. I thread my way along those that have been cleared; even in frost they remain wet because of the salt. The verges, heaped high with snow-plough packed snow, are ruined and blackened like a building after fire. On the other side of hedge or wall the white begins, snow clear to the next blobbed wall. There are no colours in this landscape, it is black and white, and even the black is faded – grey black, faint black: whiteness of snow overpowers all, bleaching the eye, leeching colour.
My eyes are suffering; they ache, and at times white masses seem to shift before them, even when I’m not driving. The world seems slippery to them, they can’t get a grip on it. Perhaps I should buy some sunglasses. My neck and shoulders ache as well. I need to take a rest from driving.
You talk rubbish. A tube of chemicals fizzing, changing colour by the minute. Lions pace. Pigs chew. Marion drives. It’s Nature’s way, my dear – survival. Do you think you’ve made a choice? Bid for freedom, escape? Can you escape your own nature, your own substance, the sloppy porridge of cells which are your construction, flesh and bones? All they’re programmed for
