Written on the Body (14 page)

March. Elgin had promised to write to me in March.

I counted the days like someone under house arrest. It was bitter cold and the woods were filled with wild white daffodils. I tried to take comfort from the flowers, from the steady budding of the trees. This was new life, surely some of it would rub off on me?

The wine bar, otherwise known as ‘A Touch of Southern Comfort’, was staging a spring festival to attract back customers whose overdrafts still hadn’t recovered from the Christmas festival. For us who worked there, this meant dressing in lime-green body stockings with a simple crown of artificial crocuses about our heads. The drinks had a spring theme: March Hare Punch, Wild Oat Sling, Blue Tit. It didn’t matter what you ordered, the ingredients were the same apart from the liquor base. I mixed cheap cooking brandy, Japanese whisky, something that called itself gin and the occasional filthy sherry with pulp orange juice, thin cream, cubes of white sugar and various kitchen colourings. Soda water to top up and at £5.00 a couple (we only served couples at Southern Comfort) cheap at the price during Happy Hour.

The management ordered a March pianist and told him to make his way at his own speed through the Simon and Garfunkel songbook. For some reason he became autistically stuck at ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. Whenever I arrived for work at 5 o’clock the silver girl was sailing by on words supplied by a tearful crowd of already tipsy punters. Against the lush chords and the aching tremeloes of our guests, we Spring Greens leapt from table to table, dropping food parcels of pizza and jugs of consolation. I began to despise my fellow man.

Still no word from Elgin. Work harder, mix more cocktails, stay up late, don’t sleep, don’t think. I might
have taken to the bottle had there been anything fit to drink.

‘I’d like to see where you live.’

I was behind the bar grimly jigging a few pints of Lethal Extra when Gail Right made it clear that she was coming home with me. At two in the morning when the last of our night birds had been tipped from their sodden nest, she locked up and put my push bike in the hatch of her car. She had a Tammy Wynette tape on the cassette.

‘You’re very reserved,’ she said. ‘I like that. I don’t get a lot of it at work.’

‘Why do you run that place?’

‘I have to do something for a living. Can’t depend on Prince Charming at my age.’ She laughed. ‘Or with my tastes.’

Stand by your man, said Tammy, and show the world you love him.

‘I’m thinking of having a Country and Western Festival in the summer, what about it?’ Gail was taking the corners too fast.

‘What will we have to wear?’

She laughed again, more shrilly this time. ‘Don’t you like your little body stocking? I think you look gorgeous.’ She pronounced the word with an accented ‘O’ so that it sounded less like a compliment and more like the gaping chasm.

‘It’s very good of you to drop me off,’ I said. ‘I can offer you something if you like.’

‘Ooh yes,’ she said. ‘Ooh yes.’

We got out of her car under the frozen sky. I unlocked my door with frozen fingers and invited her in with a frozen heart.

‘Lovely and warm in here,’ she said snuggling herself
in front of the stove. She had a vast bottom. It reminded me of a pair of shorts a boyfriend of mine had once worn which said (
GL
)
ASS
.
HANDLE WITH CARE
. She wiggled and knocked over a Toby jug.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It was too fat for the fireplace.’

She eased herself into the trembling armchair and accepted my offering of cocoa with a leer about Casanova. I had thought that was an esoteric fact.

‘It’s not true,’ I said. ‘Chocolate is a wonderful sedative.’ Which isn’t true either but I thought Gail Right might be susceptible to a bit of Mind over Matter. I yawned pointedly.

‘Busy day,’ she said. ‘Busy day. Makes me think of other things. Dark exciting things.’

I thought of treacle. What would it be like to be caught in the wallow of Gail Right?

I had a boyfriend once, his name was Carlo, he was a dark exciting thing. He made me shave off all my body hair and did the same to himself. He claimed it would increase sensation but it made me feel like a prisoner in a beehive. I wanted to please him, he smelled of fir cones and port, his long body passion-damp. We lasted six months and then Carlo met Robert who was taller, broader and thinner than me. They exchanged razorblades and cut me out.

‘What are you dreaming about?’ asked Gail.

‘An old love.’

‘You like ’em old do you? That’s good. Mind you, I’m not as old as I look, not when you get down to the upholstery.’

She gave the armchair a mighty thwack and a cloud of dust settled over her exhausted make-up.

‘I have to tell you now Gail that there’s someone else.’

‘There always is,’ she sighed and stared into the murky lumps of her cocoa like a fortune teller on a fix. ‘Tall, dark, and handsome?’

‘Tall, red and beautiful.’

‘Give us a bedtime story then,’ said Gail. ‘What’s she like?’

Louise, dipterous girl born in flames, 35. 34 22 36. 10 years married. 5 months with me. Doctorate in Art History. First class mind. 1 miscarriage (or 2?) 0 children. 2 arms, 2 legs, too many white T-cells. 97 months to live.

‘Don’t cry,’ said Gail, kneeling in front of my chair, her plump ringed hand on my thin empty ones. ‘Don’t cry. You did the right thing. She would have died, how could you have forgiven yourself that? You’ve given her a chance.’

‘It’s incurable.’

‘That’s not what her doctor says. She can trust him, can’t she?’

I hadn’t told Gail everything.

She touched my face very softly. ‘You’ll be happy again. We could be happy together couldn’t we?’

Six in the morning and I was lying in my saggy rented double bed with Gail Right sagging beside me. She smelled of face powder and dry rot. She was snoring heavily and would be for some time to come, so I got up, borrowed her car, and drove to the phone box.

We hadn’t made love. I’d run my hands over her padded flesh with all the enthusiasm of a second-hand sofa dealer. She’d patted my head and fallen asleep, which was as well since my body had all the sensitivity of a wet-suit.

I put the money in the slot and listened to the ringing tones while my breath steamed up the barren phone box.
My heart was over-beating. Someone answered, sleepy, grumpy.

‘HELLO? HELLO?’

‘Hello Elgin.’

‘What time do you call this?’

‘Early morning after another sleepless night.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Our agreement. How is she?’

‘Louise is in Switzerland. She’s been quite ill but she’s much better now. We have had good results. She won’t be back in England for some time if at all. You can’t see her.’

‘I don’t want to see her.’ (LIAR LIAR.)

‘That’s good because she certainly doesn’t want to see you.’

The phone went dead. I held on to the receiver for a moment, staring stupidly into the mouthpiece. Louise was OK, that was all that mattered.

I got into the car and drove the deserted miles home. Sunday morning and no-one around. The upstairs rooms were tightly curtained, the houses on the road were still asleep. A fox ran across my path, a chicken hanging limply from its mouth. I would have to deal with Gail.

At home there were only two sounds: the metallic ticking of the clock and Gail’s snores. I closed the door on the stairs and left myself alone with the clock. In the very early morning the hours have a different quality, they stretch and promise. I took out my books and tried to work. Russian is the only language I’m good at, which is a help since there aren’t that many of us competing for the same jobs. The Francophiles have a terrible time, everybody wants to sit outside a Paris café and translate
the new edition of Proust. Not me. I used to think that a tour de force was a school trip.

‘You idiot,’ said Louise cuffing me gently.

She got up to make coffee and brought it in fresh with the smell of plantations and sun. The aromatic steam warmed our faces and clouded my glasses. She drew a heart on each lens. ‘So that you won’t see anybody but me,’ she said. Her hair cinnabar red, her body all the treasures of Egypt. There won’t be another find like you Louise. I won’t see anybody else.

I worked until the clock chimed twelve and there was a horrible heaving from upstairs. Gail Right had woken up.

I moved quickly to the kettle, sensing that some appeasement would be necessary. Would a mug of tea protect me? I put out my hand to Earl Grey and settled on Empire Blend. The Stand Up And Be Counted of teas. A man-sized tea. A tea with so much tannin that designers use it as pigment.

She was in the bathroom. I heard the judder judder of the water pipes then the assault against the enamel. Unwillingly the tank was forced to part with every drop of hot water, it wheezed to the very end then came to a stop with a dreadful clank. I hoped she hadn’t disturbed the sediment.

‘Never disturb the Sediment,’ the farmer had said when he’d showed me round the place. He said it as though the Sediment were some fearful creature who lived under the hot water.

‘What will happen if I do?’

He shook his head doomfully. ‘Can’t say.’

I’m sure he meant he didn’t know but did he have to make it sound like an ancient curse?

I took Gail her tea and knocked at the door.

‘Don’t be shy,’ she called.

I prised open the door from its stiff catch and plonked the tea on the bathside. The water was brown. Gail was streaky. She looked like a prime cut of streaky bacon. Her eyes were small and red from the night before. Her hair stuck out like a straw rick. I shuddered.

‘Cold isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Scrub my back honey will you?’

‘Must stoke up the fire, Gail. Can’t let you get cold.’

I fled down the stairs and did indeed stoke up the fire. I would gladly have stoked the whole house and left it roasting Gail inside. This isn’t polite, I told myself. Why are you so horror-struck by a woman whose only fault is to like you and whose only quality is to be larger than life?

Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam. Gail Right was at the bottom of the stairs. I straightened up and made a quick smile.

‘Hello love,’ she said kissing me with a suckering sound. ‘Got any bacon sandwiches?’

While Gail made her way through what was left of Autumn Effie, the farmer’s yearly pig to the slaughter, she told me she was going to change my shifts at the wine bar so that we could work together. ‘I’ll give you more money as well.’ She licked the grease from her lower lip and where it had dripped on to her arm.

‘I’d rather not. I like things the way they are.’

‘You’re in shock. Try it my way for a bit.’ She leered at me over the crusts of her breakfast. ‘Didn’t you enjoy a bit of home company last night? Those hands of yours got everywhere.’

Her own hands were wedging Effie between her jaws as though she feared the pig might still have the guts to make a break for it. She had fried the bacon herself then
soaked the bread in the fat before shutting the sandwich. Her fingernails were not quite free of red polish and some of this had found its way on to the bread.

‘I love a bacon sandwich,’ she said. ‘The way you touched me. So light and nimble, do you play the piano?’

‘Yes,’ I said in an unnaturally high voice. ‘Excuse me please.’

I got to the toilet just ahead of my vomit. On your knees, seat up head down, stucco the bowl with porridge. I wiped my mouth and rinsed out with water, spitting away the burning in the back of my throat. If Louise had had chemotherapy she might be suffering this every morning. And I wasn’t with her. ‘Remember that’s the point, that’s the point,’ I said to myself in the mirror. ‘That’s the route she won’t have to take so long as she’s with Elgin.’

‘How do you know?’ said the piping doubting voice I had come so much to fear.

I crept back into the sitting room and took a swig of whisky from the bottle. Gail was doing her make-up in a pocket mirror. ‘Not a vice I hope?’ she said squinting under her eyeliner.

‘I’m not feeling well.’

‘You don’t get enough sleep, that’s your trouble. I heard you at six o’clock this morning. Where did you go?’

‘I had to telephone someone.’

Gail put down her wand of mascara. It said wand on the side of the tube but it looked more like a cowprod.

‘You’ve got to forget her.’

‘I may as well forget myself.’

‘What shall we do today?’

‘I’ve got to work.’

Gail considered me for a moment then bundled her
tools in their vinyl bag. ‘You’re not interested in me honey are you?’

‘It’s not that I …’

‘I know, you think I’m a fat old slag who just wants a piece of something firm and juicy. Well you’re right. But I’d do my share of the work. I’d care for you and be a good friend to you and see you right. I’m not a sponger, I’m not a tart. I’m a good-time girl whose body has blown. Shall I tell you something honey? You don’t lose your lust at the rate you lose your looks. It’s a cruel fact of nature. You go on fancying it just the same. And that’s hard but I’ve got a few things left. I don’t come to the table empty handed.’

She got up and took her keys. ‘Think about it. You know where to find me.’

I watched her drive off in her car and I felt depressed and ashamed. I went back to bed, gave up the fight and dreamed of Louise.

April. May. I continued my training as a cancer specialist. They got to call me the Hospital Ghoul down at the Terminal Ward. I didn’t care. I visited patients, listened to their stories, found ones who’d got well and sat by ones who died. I thought all cancer patients would have strong loving families. The research hype is about going through it together. It’s almost a family disease. The truth is that many cancer patients die alone.

‘What do you want?’ one of the junior doctors finally asked me.

‘I want to know what it’s like. I want to know what it is.’

She shrugged. ‘You’re wasting your time. Most days I think we’re all wasting our time.’

‘Then why bother? Why do you bother?’

‘Why bother? That’s a question for the whole human
race isn’t it?’