Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1 (3 page)

I shut my eyes. ‘I've never talked about this stuff to anyone.' Perhaps when I open them all this will be gone.

‘That's OK,' says Mandy. ‘In here don't count. We're doing time, ain't we? We'll never meet on the out. In here's a different world, init, Debs? Go on, Corinne. Never know, you might even feel better after.'

I open my eyes. It's all still there. Same cell. Same smell of hot dirt and sweat. Same flickering fluorescent light that irritates overloaded switches inside my head. Same two women by my bed, looking at me. ‘OK, I'll tell you why I never cut myself again.'

It can't make me feel worse than I already do. How stupid do I feel to tell them it was because of a man I cut myself twenty years ago. And here I am going through hell again. Because of another man. Back at rock bottom. Back in this grey netherworld, transparent as a wraith. I can't blame the people whose hands slipped against mine as I fell into the abyss. The abyss is inside me.

‘OK,' I say again, ‘I'll tell you what happened.' Twenty years ago. I'll do anything not to think about what happened yesterday. Maybe I could hitch a ride on the story and end up somewhere else. Maybe I could weave my own magic carpet to escape from here.

I take a deep breath.

Mandy exchanges glances with Debs. ‘Oi, quit stalling.'

‘Talking's difficult,' I tell her. ‘I need a drink.'

‘Get started,' says Mandy. ‘It'll take your mind off of it.'

I cough and retch and put my hand over my mouth and rummage in the bed for that bit of tissue. They're still looking at me, waiting. Eventually I say, ‘It was back in 1971.'

‘What? I was only seven then,' says Mandy, ‘You don't look that old, mate.'

‘I was only just born,' echoes Debs.

‘I was twenty two,' I tell them, ‘and I was in love.'

‘That's new,' says Mandy. ‘Nice, was he? Handsome?'

Handsome? Not really. Tall and dark… but not handsome. Twenty years later, his face is still scorched into my retinas. Skulking. Glowering. He didn't need looks for what he did. Just charisma like a razor. He sucked all the love out of me. He squeezed out my confidence like the juice from an orange.

I dab with my fingers at a mark on my blue cardigan. I must have been sick on it at some point. If we could rub out memories. ‘I don't know if you'd say nice,' I tell them. ‘But when he ended it, in the summer of '71, I felt so raw inside I needed a knife to show it on the outside. A serrated knife with a brown wooden handle.' Debs' hawk eyes are scouring my lower arms. ‘The scar isn't on my arms,' I tell her, ‘Mandy knows where it is.'

But I'm not going to show you. So unpeel your eyes. Back off.

‘Friends tried to patch me up. But I couldn't pretend that life goes on. I went back to the cottage in Dorset where I'd been with him, and waited for him. I waited for months.'

‘Did he have a name, this bloke?' asks Debs.

I'm scared to say it, even so long after. As if speaking it out loud could summon him back. I steel myself: ‘Hayden,' I say.

‘There, that wasn't so hard,' says Mandy. ‘So, where were you… In some cottage…?'

‘Yes,' I carry on. ‘In December '71, nearly twenty years ago, there I was sunk in that threadbare chintz armchair. Where he used to sit. Hayden.' Saying his name out loud again is strange. Hearing my voice speaking in sentences is strange. But the words seem to come stumbling out, one following the other. ‘I was waiting for him to come back. Shivering in front of the fire where he used to warm his hands. Logs spluttering in the old-fashioned black iron hearth. But nothing could drive the cold out of my bones.'

I always thought he would come back. On the arm of the chair was my diary. Where I'd written it all. The blue cover with words and pictures pasted on it, from the good times of our summer together. The edges of the pictures were curling. Our love was unpeeling.

‘I looked into the fire, and that was when I realized I had to go to Greece.'

‘Greece?' says Debs. ‘Whassat for?'

I stop and think. ‘I don't think I knew at the time. Perhaps it was the Greek myths I read as a child. I didn't know why or how, but I knew I had to go. And I did. One day I started walking and left everything behind.'

All the clothes I wore when I knew him. My blue cord jeans with the patchwork flares I'd sewn in. My embroidered blouse with the ribbon he used to untie. The books. Even my diary. That diary. I left that behind too. If I could see the diary again, perhaps I could understand what happened.

‘So did ya walk there?' asks Debs.

‘I walked the first bit. Then I hitched. I'd saved some money. Got trains. I worked here and there. I kept going 'till I got to Greece. It had always been my dream. I buried my nose in the sand and the sun melted me and joined me together again. Healing the wound.'

‘Lucky sod,' says Mandy.

‘I been in the sun,' says Debs, ‘and it didn't make no difference to me.'

‘I was there for weeks, months. Camping by the sea with these two guys. It's because of them that I never cut myself again.'

‘Two? That's naughty. Let's have it.'

I look at these two women I don't know. ‘Why am I telling you this?'

‘Take it this way,' says Mandy, ‘We ain't going nowhere for a couple of weeks. 'Till we done the detox. We get out of this room two hours a day if we're lucky. We're out of tobacco. The food's crap. There's no TV. Shoot.'

I feel cornered. My head is pounding and I don't feel strong enough to argue. I struggle with my left hand to prop a pillow behind my back. Mandy comes round to help and whispers in my ear, ‘Go for it, girl.'

A smile passes between us, we kind of make half of it each, and I start.

‘We were camping on an island. On the ferry going there I realized why it had to be Greece. It was around Easter 1972. I was sitting on a bench on deck with my hair blowing, the light so bright it hurt your eyes. “Luminous,” Henry Miller called it.'

‘Who's he?' asks Debs.

‘I was reading his book about Greece.'

‘What's he got to do with it?' asks Debs.

The pain in my head makes me wince. So I'm going to be cross-examined too. ‘Look', I say, ‘It's hard enough for me to get any bloody words out. If you want me to tell you what happened, I have to remember it my way. I have to go back and picture it all again. Every little thing, take it or leave it.'

‘We got you,' says Mandy. ‘Get on with it, then.'

‘So, I was reading Henry Miller. Macho man, spilling his thoughts onto the page like he was the last big spender. Weaving words about his impressions. Travelling through that shimmering landscape. The rocks are mad, he said, mad with history. I was soaking it all up. Putting distance between myself and what I'd been through. Trying to leave my troubles behind. Trying to escape to those bare mountains rising out of the deep blue, the islands we were passing. The dazzling sun and the dry air. I was beginning to feel that nothing could touch me, the wind was too clean and the food from the Tourist Class cafeteria smelt too sweet, and the lavatories were too shitawful.'

‘Like in here,' says Mandy.

‘Worse,' I say. ‘They had a piece of flat ceramic on the floor with a hole in the middle. People called them “shit-and-run”. You had to crouch over. And usually the people before you had missed the hole and there were piles of …'

‘I feel sick,' says Debs. ‘I liked it better on deck.'

I backtrack. ‘OK. I was sitting between two English men. I looked over their shoulders. One of them was reading in a newspaper about torture in Northern Ireland. The other was reading a colour supplement. Something about the silent majority and everyone in England sinking into a coma. I remember thinking, I've got to get away from these people, from everything to do with England. Away from everything I know. Away from myself. I need fresh air.

‘I moved down the deck and the only free seat was next to a boy with big ears who turned out to be American. He greeted me, “Hi! Are you German? English?” He was lanky, with sandals and a rucksack.

‘My spirits sank. “English,” I said.

‘“I was just in London,” he told me. “Did you see the Tutankhamun show at the British Museum?”

‘I hadn't, but that didn't stop him talking. “Do you know if that's the island in that film with Melina Mercouri?” He started telling me the plot of the film. “Home's not like this, that's for sure.” Then he took out a small brown notebook. On the cover I could see he had written his name “Walt Wyman”. And underneath, “Portrait of the Artist as a Traveller”. He opened it and started writing. I could see over his shoulder. His handwriting was tiny, cramped in tight rows. I watched, wondering what he was recording that was so important to him.'

Like that diary I kept during the last year in England, pouring out my troubles as my life fell apart. That diary, still lying in the empty cottage where I'd left it, full of secrets that mattered to no-one. Dismal to think about the millions of words people scrawl out the world over, just like him. Just like me. Why do we believe that what we think and feel is worth writing down? Are we ever going to read it again? Do we expect other people to read it?

I can feel my body sinking back into the pillow with the hopelessness of it. ‘For what was he writing?' I mutter. ‘It made me feel tired.' I put my hand over my eyes.

‘Perhaps it made him feel better,' says Mandy, ‘Like talking. Get it off your chest.'

‘I couldn't see it that way then,' I reply. I drop my hand and look down at my empty boots on the floor. ‘Perhaps I envied that American. After I left Dorset, I could never write anything, never finish anything. As if it was all locked up in that cottage along with the hope of seeing Hayden again. I felt that anything I wrote would be useless. Without him the words seized up.

‘As I sat on that boat, I looked at the blue sea and the sky and all I saw was rejection. Like a veil hanging between me and the world. I couldn't see the point in anything, least of all myself. Not after I'd lost him.'

Those strands of black hair hanging down in front of his face, his face like a stern mask. And his frown casting me out of the land of the living.

I look up at Mandy. Her eyes are fixed on my hand. I realize it's my right hand that's resting on my lap. Debs hasn't noticed. I slide it back under the cover. ‘I was rock bottom,' I say. ‘I just wanted something to stop the aching inside.'

‘I know some stuff can do that,' says Mandy.

‘He sounds a right git,' says Debs.

‘C'mon,' says Mandy, ‘Every woman loves a bastard.'

‘He wasn't a bastard,' I try to explain. ‘People who are in pain cause pain. When it was good with him, it was paradise. I felt loved to my bones, to the marrow in my bones. When it turned bad, he dragged me into his private hell. The colour drained out of the world.

‘So this American guy scribbling, all I could see was the futility. The vain hope of making things better. And I realized that's what people go to Greece for. Going back to the beginnings. What they call the birthplace of civilization. Like a melting pot they can dip into and come out new. Thinking they're going to find what they need. There were hippies there hoping to find freedom. Commuters looking for excitement. Scholars wanting knowledge. Rootless people looking for history. Americans searching for authenticity. Because they don't feel they have any. Trying to catch it in their cameras and take it home to show the folks. This boy was trying to write his way to becoming someone he wanted to be.'

‘Where d'you learn to talk like that, girl?' Mandy rolls her eyes. ‘You think too much.'

‘And look where it's got me,' A laugh slips out but then it turns into a retch.

There's a pause. ‘So then what?' asks Debs.

‘So then the boat arrived at the island. The engines gurgled into reverse. There was a lurch as it hit the rubber tyres along the side of the jetty. The American boy dropped his journal and quickly picked it up again. He dusted it all over. From the deck we saw figures running up and down on the jetty, catching ropes and fastening them, shouting in Greek. Then people started to pour off with children, bundles, goats. There was a crowd waiting on the quayside. Old lorries beeping. Henry Miller wrote that the Greeks always got as excited as if they'd never seen a boat before. Experiencing everything as if it was the first time. Back then I thought it was a great gift. I lived my life like that. Now I'm not so sure. Everything hurts fresh and raw too.

‘I realized then that I believed Greece would make me better as well. Help me forget Hayden's haunting face. Help me get over it.'

Greece a place of beginnings. Of re-beginnings. Odysseus gets to hell over the Rivers of Fear. How to return? He got back, but Persephone never got free from the Lord of the Underworld, not completely.

‘So it was all about this bloke Hayden who did you over?' asks Debs. When she raises her eyebrows in a question her face softens.

‘Yes,' I say. ‘But I think rejection is like cutting a pack of cards. In your fingers you're looking at one card. The one on top. That's the rejection staring you in the face. But underneath there's a lot of other cards. Previous rejections stacked up behind in the wadge in your hand.'

‘You made a bum cut,' says Mandy.

I can't help smiling. ‘I think he'd be the Ace of Spades.'

That gaunt figure in the black velvet jacket. I can see him brooding in that old armchair in the cottage. I can see him striding through the Dorset countryside, his frozen wrath casting a shadow over the hills. Refusing to speak to me, his face set like a corpse. It was like talking to the dead.

I take a deep breath. Might as well tell the whole story. ‘But behind him in the pack there was an older rejection.'