Flying Under Bridges (43 page)

I lay
in the snow, each breath stabbing into my lungs. Could you die in the snow in
south-east England or did it have to be some Siberian steppe? Could I just lie
there and never get up again? Why not? What possible loss would it be? I could
feel the cold seeping through my trousers and it felt good. I remembered lying
in a bank of white as a child with my dad. Lying there on our backs, sweeping
our arms and legs in great swathes across the ground to make angels in the
snow. The tears began to calm and I tried to breathe again. Slowly I stretched
out my limbs into the white landscape. I hurt, I hurt everywhere, but I
concentrated my mind. I concentrated on making the most perfect angel, and when
it was finished I looked up to the sky.

‘What do
you think of that then?’ I yelled to the man upstairs, to my creator, to
Buddha, to anyone who was listening. That was when I saw the bird. It was a
short distance away from where I lay and in my haze of tears it appeared to be
what Tom had wondered about — a crow with white feathers. I sat up to look
closer and scared the creature. It flapped its wings and flew away, black as
night without the snow for cover. It was then that I saw what had cracked when
I fell. I thought it was a cross at first but actually it was one of those
wooden markings they put along the side of new roads. I don’t know what they’re
for. Just two old bits of rough wood slapped together in the shape of the
cross. I thought it was a sign. At last I had been heard. I, Eve Marshall, was
important enough to have been given a revelation. I crawled towards it and
knelt before this holy sign. With my eyes clamped shut and my hands praying
like a child, I began to beg for help.

‘Okay,
this is the fabulous bit of the story where I have a message straight from
above to do what I did and you can either claim I’m crazy or wonder if I am
touched by the Lord.’

The
shrink looks at me. ‘Is that what you want to tell me?’

‘No, I
want to stop that’s all. I just want to go back to my cell.’

I
prayed and I prayed and nothing. The wind blew along the unmade road and I was
alone. I prayed to die, I prayed to understand, I prayed for calm. I did what
people have done for as long as there have been people. I couldn’t face my
life, the truth of my life and so I tried to imagine some way or place or time
where it wouldn’t exist. I was utterly weak and helpless and what I really
wanted was some hero who would come and save me. I don’t think I would have
minded much whether Jesus, the archangel Gabriel or Batman had turned up.

I
looked up to the sky and then along the endless track ploughed through the
country for the new bypass. Everything seemed vast and I seemed so small and
insignificant. I wanted to understand and what I understood was that it was
pointless. No one spoke to me. No ethereal being came down to hover on the
digger parked beside me. Of course not. I had done nothing to deserve it. I was
nothing. I was no genius that the world would be glad had come. What a
ridiculous idea that my brain could come to any sort of adequate understanding
of the world and my place in it. It was laughable.

So now
what? Make the leap to faith? Jump from not believing to believing because it
was safer? I thought about John’s kind of Christian where the basic alternative
to accepting Jesus into my heart was hellfire. We were back in the playground.
I had to play by the rules or I was out. Maybe it would be okay. I just had to
put off being happy till I was dead. Was this God’s divine plan? Did God even
have time to make a plan for me? Of course he did. God was an intelligent,
benign creator. He had time for everyone. The suffering was for our own good.

I tried
to stay with that thought but my brain wouldn’t shut up. It was like I had a
little devil sitting on my shoulder whispering, ‘If God is so all-compassionate
and all-powerful then why couldn’t our good be secured without suffering? If it’s
a test then why did he make us so we needed testing? If suffering comes from
disobedience to God, why did he, the all-powerful one, not make it so we can
only obey? How come so many religions are based on what God said to people and
yet no two beliefs ever got the same message? Did someone get a bad connection?’

I kept
trying to get back on track.

‘I’m
not trying to be difficult,’ I yelled to the sky, ‘I just don’t get it!’

‘God is
benevolent but his benevolence works in mysterious ways,’ came the answer.

‘I’ll
say,’ I muttered, as my head filled with more heresy. What if God was just
incompetent or a bully? What if… there were no more what ifs? I was not going
to get a revelation. I could either lie down and die or get on with the lot I
had been given.

I think
I was exhausted because I seemed to see one of my dreams as I knelt there. I
was on a raft. A really strong, wooden raft, lashed together with stout rope. I
was alone on the raft but it had everything I needed. The water was calm as I
drifted down a wide river. Then slowly the water began to surge and things
started to slip from my raft. Things I needed. The waves got worse and soon the
raft held only me. Then the raft itself began to break up until I was in the
water, clinging to what remained and I knew I had to let go.

I stood
up, knowing I would have to say goodbye to everything that had got me through
before. The old stuff was gone and there was nothing new to replace it. I had
no choice but to do it my own way. I looked at the roadside cross and had never
felt so alone in my life.

As I
turned to leave, I noticed something on the ground where I had been lying. The
snow was white, pure white, unblemished except in the middle of my angel. There
was a large patch of red. My life was seeping from me.

Under
the Knife

A cheerful heart is a good medicine,

but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.

(PROVERBS
18.22)

The hysterectomy was easy.
The doctor had been pushing me to have it done and I swept in on the
much-maligned NHS. Everyone was very sympathetic. Women’s troubles. Adam even
brought me a present. He’d been to Düsseldorf about some infrared burglar
alarms, so I got a solitaire pendant with a 1 x 0.01 carat, brilliant in a
14-carat white gold setting —
£35.70
without tax, and two free toilet
bags from British Midland. He wouldn’t hold my hand since he thought I’d slept
with Inge but he did come. Anyway, having my reproductive system whipped out
was free and not as bad as I had expected.

Wedding
Day

Hear, O daughter, consider, and incline your ear;

forget your people and your father’s house…

(PSALMS
45.10)

I didn’t get foreskins as
a wedding present. They turned out to be much too difficult to get hold of. I
got a lace tablecloth and some matching napkins. Tom, however, outdid himself.
He came downstairs with Claudette on a large oak plinth. I don’t know where her
soul had gone but she stood crouched down, just like the cat who had plagued me
all those years. Even the glint in her eyes was the same.

‘It’s
for Shirl and that… man. For the wedding.’ Tom handed the moggy over to me. ‘I
think Shirley was fond of Claudette.’

I took
the creature in my arms and nodded. ‘Yes.’

Tom
stood there in his usual jeans and T-shirt. ‘Are you not coming to the wedding?’
I asked.

‘I don’t
see the point,’ said Tom.

‘No.’

I put
the cat down in the hall but it was so lifelike that I couldn’t drink my
coffee. In the end I took the monster out to the car and put it on the back
seat to take to the ceremony. John was just returning from the hire shop with
his wedding suit. It was pure white and hanging lifeless on a hanger in his
hand.

‘I
think there might be more snow,’ he said. ‘Look lovely in the pictures. White
snow, us all in white.’

‘Yes.’

John
swung his suit over his shoulder and went in whistling. I could see Mother
through the dining-room window, sitting in her chair. No one was ever going to
help me with her. Martha had gone back to Bangkok and William had also come to
a decision.

‘Now
that I’m going to be a father, I have had to do some thinking,’ he said
sonorously. ‘It’s an important step in a man’s life and it has made me think
about my own father. He didn’t want his money going to Mother and I feel that I
must honour his wishes.’

‘But he’s
not here and I am. I need some help, William,’ I begged, but he wouldn’t
listen. The father-to-be.

I went
in to sit with Mother before getting ready. I think she’d been dead most of the
morning. Well, I’d been busy and hadn’t looked in on her as much as usual. Now
she had gone to the great Last Supper in the top room. I sat and looked at her.
She wasn’t there any more but maybe she had given me a gift. Maybe she had
meant to let me go. I felt calm until I thought about Shirley. It didn’t seem
like a great omen for your marriage to have your grandmother die on your
wedding day, so I called Tom downstairs.

‘Darling,
I’m afraid Granny’s died.’ I whispered so John wouldn’t hear.

‘Really!’
His face perked up like a boy with a new bicycle.

‘Yes.
You can’t have her, but I do need your help.’ Tom nodded. ‘I don’t want anyone
to know yet. Now John won’t come in here but he might see her through the
windows, so I want you to sit with her as if everything is perfectly normal. All
right? Just sit next to her and when John looks through the window he’ll think
she’s fine and you’re having a chat or whatever.’

Tom
went in to be with Mother and I went upstairs to get changed. John was in the
shower. He had been in the shower that day Pe Pe was here. I heard the water
stop and I seemed to be unable to move. His suit was hanging on the door of the
spare room. I moved towards it and put my hand out for the hanger. I was
standing there with the suit in my hand when John appeared from the bathroom.
He had a towel round his neck and was wearing nothing but white Y-fronts. John
looked at me and I think he knew I was near the edge.

‘Look,
Eve, I only want what’s best for Shirley.’

‘Why
can’t you wait?’ I stammered. ‘Till she’s been to university?’

John
laughed. ‘University? She’s not going to university. Eve, I thought you
understood. Shirley’s marrying me. She’s going to be my wife.’

I was
smiling, so I think he thought it was all fine. He came towards me and I took
off. It was so childish. I thought if he didn’t have the suit then he couldn’t
marry my daughter. You see, if I had been a man I would have just punched him
but instead I raced down the stairs, grabbed the car keys and ran outside. I
think it took John a moment to react because I actually got to the car before
he made it outside. I threw the suit on the front seat and slammed on the
ignition. The car was parked in the middle of the drive and I needed to turn
around to get out. By now John was racing down the snowy path in his
underpants. I shoved the automatic gear lever into drive and jerked forward. It
was the jerk that did it. Claudette, stuffed though she was, had one last leap
left in her. She flew from the back seat, plinth and all, and wedged the
gearbox into reverse. I looked up and saw John right behind me in the mirror.

‘So it
was all an accident? You didn’t mean to run him over? Crush him against the
wall?’

‘No. I
could have stopped it. I could have braked there and then but I just let the
car ride back. Back and back to crucify him on my wisteria.’

‘What
happened then?’

‘There
was a bump, a horrible soft bump, as the bent car aerial pierced his side. John
spread his arms out against the wall and the car pinned him against the
wisteria. The dead twigs drooped down on his head, which fell to one side and
he was dead. I looked up at the house and I could see Tom sitting in the
dining-room window. He had no idea what had happened. He just saw me looking at
him so he picked up Mother’s arm and made her wave.’

There
is a long silence. The psychiatrist looks at me and flicks back through his
notes.

‘And
all this happened after you had the hysterectomy?’ he asks.

I nod.
That will be it. We had come at last to a conclusion. The hysterectomy. I was
hysterical. That was it. There was nothing else wrong. How stupid I am.

Love,

Eve