The Woman who Loved an Octopus and other Saint's Tales (13 page)

She wrote to me about the stories my parents have been telling people. They're saying that I moved away because of the strain. That I was attacked and assaulted and that I had a nervous breakdown and have gone away to my aunt and uncle's to recover. And the really weird thing, Aneesa writes, is that hardly anybody says, ‘But didn't she move in with her boyfriend? Didn't she have this job in an office?' It's as if they've forgotten. It's only been a few months, and already this legend of my parents is stronger than reality.

But it can't last. Can it?

Non

Fifth or sixth century

The daughter of a provincial petty king or chieftain, Non was probably a nun. She was raped by the King of Ceredigion. When she fell pregnant she herself was blamed for this sign of what was deemed her ‘sexual incontinence', and excluded from the convent.

She left to live in a hut near the cliffs at Bryn y Garn (today St Non's Bay), where she gave birth during a raging tempest. During labour, she is said to have pressed her fingers into a nearby rock with such force that the marks are still visible.

She later founded convents in Wales and Cornwall, as well as in Brittany, where she is said to be held in higher regard than even her famous son, St David.

I used to be able to fly.

I would fly to work, but then people started commenting on how I climbed in through the window every morning. I took it as a compliment at first, but after I'd been taken aside a couple of times by motherly types and given gentle hints about what they called my ‘oddity', and how this wouldn't do my career any good, I decided to land in the park across the street and walk up the stairs like, apparently, everybody else.

I thought they all flew. I assumed they just didn't let on during the working day, reserving it for after hours, when they'd hover in the garden over their roses, bobbing on the breeze and enjoying the scent.

But they thought that I was odd.

I think they're afraid. They even strap their children down in their buggies so that they don't lift off where people can see.

I wanted to have a career, so I adapted and began to walk in public as well. I tended to do the flying only when nobody was watching. My manager knew, but he didn't seem to mind.

We usually went out on a Friday night, whoever was still in the office at the time; it was that sort of place. Sometimes it was just the manager and me, but he always behaved OK. I could talk to him intelligently, which isn't something you often find in a boss.

Only one evening it ended differently.

I still can't remember all of it. I remember the lights in the bar; strobe lights, so it must have been a club, and it was late. I remember drinking a bit but not being drunk and the police confirmed that; I was well under the limit for driving. Only I didn't drive; he gave me a lift home and I didn't see why not; it was the middle of January, sleeting and raining. ‘You won't have much fun flying home in that,' he said and I agreed. ‘Save you the cab fare.'

I accepted, he'd done it before when the weather was bad, and I knew him for a safe driver; I would never have thought it of him. Then we're in his car and he's driving not to my house but somewhere else, and I'm surprised, and there's his hand on my thigh and I'm confused and from then on it doesn't make sense.

I remember a face above me. Breathing.

I remember feeling surprised, disbelieving. There are hands on me. His hands. They find their way under my clothes although I'm struggling. They slap me across the face when I say No.

Then it's dark. And cold.

Cold.

I don't know where I am.

There is no pain.

Yet.

All I feel is cold.

So cold.

I'm dead. I can see myself lying huddled on the ground. I can see the man getting up. I know there is a man but I've forgotten who he is. I know something has happened just now but I've forgotten what it was.

The man is breathing heavily. He tidies himself up, straightens his clothes. He does not look at me.

He tells me to get up and back into the car.

He drives me home.

He opens the car door and waits until I get out and kisses me on the cheek and says goodnight.

I walk up to my front door and hear him drive away. I am tired and my legs are unsteady so I sit down on my doorstep.

Then there is a long time of nothing.

A pain pierces through the deadness and something pulls me, pulls me like a current. Smell hits me. A wall of sound. I sit still while everything roars around me.

Much later, there is a light in my eyes. I am being taken to hospital, examined, having samples taken from me before I am allowed to wash. I do not know who I am. I do not know what has happened. They tell me I rang 999 on my mobile after it happened (after what happened? Everybody just says ‘it'), that I rang the police and an ambulance and screamed and raged, but I can't remember anything of that.

For weeks afterwards, everything is grey. I have become an old woman, weak and breathless, barely alive. I shrink from light, from noise, from touch, from life around me.

I cannot fly any more.

I want to die. For a long time, I want to die, but I don't.

I don't and I don't and I don't. I am enraged that I am still alive. I roam the rooms of my house. I can't settle down to anything. I scream. I wail. I hurl glasses and plates against the walls. I cry and howl and yell. I break planks of wood against door frames, slam the windows and break their glass panes.

One day, I slam the front door behind me and see a large crack appearing right across it.

Splinters of memory are coming back. A streetlight. The yap of a small dog in the distance. The scream of an ambulance. Music through an open car window, too loud for anyone to hear my voice over it. The look on the face above me. The mouth opening, a voice issuing, telling me to be quiet. Telling me that I wanted this. Telling me where to put my hands, ordering me to smile, to say that this is good.

Despair like a dead thing inside me. Craven fear and shame and helplessness.

I wonder why nobody asked me if I wanted to press charges. In fact, a solicitor advised me against it. It would be my word against the man's, the solicitor said, and the conviction rate in these cases was very low. According to the man, it was consensual sex, he said. According to the man, I liked a little rough and tumble. I did not have any witnesses, he said. I had been out with the man and I did not really have a case, he said.

I was too numb to say anything.

I wonder why nobody shoved a knife into my hand and urged me to cut the bastard into strips, for my greater good and that of the community.

I know who he is, the man who violated me.

I know where he lives, so I go there to watch him, and to follow him when he is next going to venture out alone.

I am going to have my revenge.

A tooth for a tooth. An I for an I. He has killed the best part of me. So now I will do the same for him. A death for a life. My life.

But when I see him, the breathlessness comes back. I cower in the shadows, hiding myself, afraid of what he will do if he sees me. The pain echoes through my body, as though the body was a thing separate from me with its own memory. I can do nothing but stand there, helpless, and watch him move off out of sight.

I hate myself.

I have no courage. I will not dare go back and try again.

I have failed. He is stronger. I am weak, I am nothing.

I go home, and see the crack across my front door. I am furious with myself for having run away. I slam the door shut behind me, and a large piece of plaster falls from the ceiling. I kick the skirting-board, and there is a hole in the wall.

Next morning I am on my watch again.

I am still surprised by the fear that crashes over me like a wave when I see him. I am breathless, and wet with sweat. I follow him on unsteady feet. My hands shake. I feel sick and small and weak. I follow him. He turns round once, his eyes sweeping over me as if he is looking for someone, something.

He does not even recognise me. I am nothing to him. I shake again, but this time it is with anger.

I will make him remember.

I wait until the time comes for my next bleeding, and then I spend almost a whole day taking off my clothes and stuffing them between my thighs, until everything is covered in red stains.

When evening comes, I look for him. I find him at home, by himself, which is lucky. He is sitting out on the terrace. I tear the lock out of his front door and go inside.

At the sound of my footsteps he looks up. ‘Who is that?' he asks, squinting into the shade.

I say my name in a voice that comes out weak and breathless, and he smiles. He smiles at me. At me.

‘Well, hello there,' he says. His voice is hearty. ‘I haven't seen you for ages! Not since... ' He reflects. ‘Not since our little outing, in fact.' He still smiles.

I feel as though I have been slapped. Again. I cannot find my voice.

I only move out onto the terrace because that's what I had planned to do. I cannot think. I want to run away. I feel like I have been given a second chance, the chance to run away, but I am too stunned to do anything except move out onto the terrace because that's what I'd planned to do.

I speak the words I have thought out beforehand. I speak like an automaton.

‘Do you remember me? Do you remember what you did to me? Look what you have done to me!'

He looks up.

He sees my bloodstained clothes. His smile slips.

I put my hand between my legs and dip it in and spray him with the blood.

He recoils.

Now I smile.

I lean against the door frame and cross my arms over my chest.

‘Do you remember me?' I say. ‘Remember the ride in the car? How I asked you to take your hand away? How I asked you to stop? How I screamed because it hurt? How you put your hands around my neck and squeezed.
Remember?
'

I can see from his eyes that he does remember, now. He tries to put his smile back into place.

‘I thought you enjoyed that,' he says.

I cannot breathe. I remember the hands round my neck. I move forward and, before he has time to react, I slip a rope round his neck. I pull it tight. My hands feel alive. I am rewarded with the astonished look on his face that is now becoming red, and the sound of his breath whistling in gasps.

But then the moment of surprise is over, and he lifts his hands and puts them between my arms, and he shoves my arms apart, and I remember how much stronger than me he was that night, and I remember the fear and how I couldn't breathe, and my arms drop and the rope falls from his neck and we stand there, chest to chest on his terrace; and I want to run away.

I bend down and pick up the rope and he doesn't stop me. And then I turn around and walk away. And he doesn't stop me.

At home, I smash every plate and glass and mug in the house. I rage and scream and fling myself against the walls after the crockery has run out.

Then I sit in the silent house and listen to the small bright sound of glass splinters settling.

I need a break. I take a weekend off and spend it by the sea.

Pebbles are a good start, but they soon become too small, sailing lazily through the air and dropping into the water with an elegant little splash.

There are some boulders further up the shore. I try to lift a small one and find that I can do it quite easily. But when I throw it, it falls far short of where I have aimed it, just a few feet away from where I am standing. I get drenched.

I think of the ride in the car. I think of myself stupefied with shock, with disbelief; weighed down so that I cannot fly away. I think of myself now, unable to fly.

Filled with fury, I pick up another large rock and hurl it with as much strength as I have. It flies in a beautiful arc, for quite a long time, then disappears into the sea. I can see white foaming up where it falls, but I don't hear the splash. I bend down for the next one.

By the evening of that day, I can heave up a boulder as large as myself and throw it a good few yards.

By the end of the weekend, I can throw one of those boulders so far that I don't hear the splash as it hits the water.

I leave the beach and walk inland, juggling with some rocks as large as my head. I go back to the house of the man who has violated me. I can see that he is at home, because his car is parked outside. I remember the car. It is the same one that he gave me the lift in. I throw the rocks at it. They bounce off the metal, only leaving some dents. The car alarm starts to wail. I pick up the car; I am surprised how light it is. I toss it from hand to hand, then throw it against the garage wall. There is a loud bang and a crash and dust billowing, and then the house alarm goes off as well.

I kick down the front door of the house and go inside.