Gwennie's Girl Page 19

  That night in the restaurant with the three of them all watching her watching them. All knowing that she knew and wondering how she was going to react. Her husband, the other man, the other man’s wife and her husband’s wife.

  As the other two danced together, she sat with the man and refused to watch or see her husband. If she didn’t see it, it wouldn’t be there, this scene would not be really happening. Her husband would not swap her like that. He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.

  She smiled at the waiter who materialised at their table like an ominous Cheshire cat and then disappeared back into the dimness all round her. The light of the candle on the table glowed and reflected in the eyes of this strange man who had happily delivered his young wife to someone else’s husband and who now expected this woman—it was her!—to complete the transaction by going to him, that other man. It was a muddle, a dreadful muddle, surely?

  She wasn’t playing. She would pretend she didn’t know the game, and then it would be all right. It would all stop if she didn’t look or didn’t admit it was happening. It couldn’t happen to her. Not to Gwennie’s girl. It was impossible that that reality should mean he would ever offer her to someone else as part of an exchange. People just didn’t do that to other people. Not now. Not here. Not outside magazines and films. Not in reality. They didn’t. He couldn’t. But he had. If she opened her eyes and acknowledged it, he had. So she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t look and then it would all go away.

  But the stranger at her table didn’t go away. Her husband danced with the stranger’s wife and the stranger held her hand until she pulled it away. He fondled her leg until she moved it away. She could feel her control slipping away as the night and the situation began to invade her.

  Yes, she was being proffered to this stranger, and at this final humiliation and defeat, her body reacted. So she went away. Ran to the car. Sobbed at the lock. Twisted the keys. Trod on the pedals. Tyres screamed with her. The engine gasped in her chest. She felt it thrusting through the darkness. Her fists were clenched. It was taking her as it pleased. She felt helpless. She was submitting. Until the car broke through the bridge. Then almost too late, she rebelled. She swung on the handle of the door and threw herself out, out of the cage of the car into the freedom of water.

  The action still surprised her. She had thought the strength had disappeared with the dreams. Passivity means weakness. They had all abandoned her. Even Mum. Well, damn her dead eyes! Damn her! Damn us all! So why was she still fighting? Mummy! Mummy! You bitch! You stupid, bloody bitch! Mummy! Mummy! Wake up! Wake up, please. Come and get me. Please. Please. Shit, do something! You are my mother. I need you! Oh, Mummy, please!?!?!?!?!

  But Mum did not come and then Lizzie knew she was on her own.

  There are bars. I wonder why there are bars. They are white and so is everything else. Way down in front of me are two toe-lumpy bumps which are white too. There is a face there somewhere. Yes, and there’s another. I think the mouths are talking, but the eyes aren’t saying much. They are watching something. A needle. It’s going into an arm and it almost hurts. I suppose that means it’s my arm. But they’re not my eyes, and it’s not my mouth. Perhaps they are my toes.

  No more certainties. Only maybe. Might be. Perhaps. For a while. We change. We grow. Forget it. Water under the bridge.

  Water. I am back in this lovely water again. I knew it would be gentle, friendly, tender and welcoming. The water likes me. I like it too. At least, I think it likes me. No more certainties. Just the water all about me, folding me, wrapping me around, caressing my body. So soft. So soft. My fingers are slipping through the surface. So soft. Like Nanna’s skin. I’m not crying anymore.

  The water flows around me. It supports me, frees me. This is freedom. I can twirl and curve and my hair is part of the tide, a living, growing, dancing thing. It plays around my face and fans out before my eyes as the water ripples. All about me is the earth in suspension. Brown. Grey. Melt into it. Feel nothing. Nothing can touch me now. I am nothing. He did that. Watch the swaying fronds move gently with the ripples. Swaying and dancing. Grey satin ripples. Swaying together. Smiling. Not at me. Don’t know I’m here. I am here in all this darkness and this darkness doesn’t like me. I don’t like the dark. There. I said it. Mummy. Mummy. Please come. Please come, Mummy. Mummy, I’m scared. Someone is screaming. It’s horrible. Stop the screaming, Mummy. Please stop me. I’m screaming, and it scares me. Mummy, please come. I can’t stop the screaming coming out. Mummy!

  She’s there in the darkness dancing away from me, leaving me here to walk home from the station alone. The doors are closed tight. I can’t get in there. I told them I hate working late. It’s quiet. There’s the other lady from the train. I can keep with her and then I won’t be frightened. I hear her footsteps but mine are much louder because of these silly high heels. She’s walking faster too. Oh, she’s turning right. She’s not going my way after all. I’ll just walk more quickly but I won’t run. I won’t run. There is no one behind me. How do I know? I wouldn’t hear someone in sneakers. He could catch up to me before I knew he was following. If I look back, he’ll be there. Don’t look. Just walk. Don’t run.

  There’s thick fog in my head and my throat. I’m hot all inside but my skin is creepy cold and my legs are slowing down. What if they stop? They are stopping. Legs! Move. Walk. Run. I want to run but they’ve stopped. They’ve stopped. There is a waterfall in my head. Legs! Run. I can’t see very clearly. Legs! Run. It’s so dark.

  There’s someone there. Mum? The man called Ahmed? It is you. Oh, you’ve come. I didn’t think anyone ever would.

  Now I’m safe. You will look after me, care for me, want me, perhaps even love me. I wonder if you will. I wonder if you will. I’ll pretend to love you if you will. Shall we dance? I love to dance. This floor is so smooth, gleaming soft and golden in the gentle light of the candles and lamps. Your eyes are so brown and dark. I won’t look. We’ll just slip down into the music. It takes us lovingly, and we sway together as it folds, swathes and meshes us.

  I feel your hand on my naked shoulders left vulnerable by the drape of my gown. Your hand is strong, hard and golden. I want to touch you, feel if you are vulnerable. But you’re not. That is a certainty. I think that is strength and freedom. I let my hair drift across your hand so it can caress you with the music and the lights. The flames are dancing gently with us. Even the night parts to our touch and closes back when we have slipped by. Such a lack of effort, energy and friction. Just fold together and let the music fuse us with the night and the candles. Night that is forever. Music that never stops. White, glowing candles standing tall and confident, sure of their beauty and strength.

  A white drift is following me. I glimpse it as I spin, like the aftermath of sparklers on Guy Fawkes’ night. It is my veil. Gossamer. Frothy. It follows me in the darkness, past the candles, through the shafts of stained colour, past the cross of a god’s broken dream, to the altar. The priest is waiting. He has tried to cover his blackness but I see it sneaking out at his wrists and between the holes in the fragile, insubstantial overlay. Yes. The priest is in black, in league with a spiteful god. Here comes the offering. He does not need it. He won’t use it. It’s a hollow gesture, this sacrifice. It is a velvet-eyed calf with ivory buds just peeping through its crown. It is a timid, trembling goat that bleats for its innocence. It is Iphigenia. See she comes through the soaring arch that pretends to point her way to heaven. A sallow sun shines through blood-red hearts, virginal blues and sterile, golden lilies. The glass is cold. The figures have immortality without life. The virgin has borne her child without love.

  The soldiers’ sweat and lust attack the king’s daughter as she moves falteringly towards the priest. Father, cries Iphigenia. Help me, Father. Please, Father, forget the wind. Love me, Father. I love you. I want to love you. Father. Help me, Father.

  The father’s dream is broken. His child is given up for others now. Iphigenia is on her cross. Soldiers dice. A child dies.
The earth shivers and the wind blows. My veil flutters and my flowers are thrown to be gathered as an omen. Always the uncertainty. Always the search for something to stop the fear. He loves me. He loves me not. Will the flowers tell me? Search for one that gives the answer I want. There are fields of them. The earth pushes them out to be plucked or trodden on. Soldiers trample them. So do children and goats and calves. I cut the flowers and watch them die slowly. See them everywhere. All around. On altars and tables and desks and graves, in urns and vases and glasses and pots, in homes and churches and schools and taverns.

  In the tavern. No. I don’t want to be here. I don’t like this place. Move legs. Walk away. Obey me. Run. Go home. They are trapped and I am held at the table again. Eating bread. Eating flesh. Drinking water. Drinking wine. A man in black attends us. Your eyes are so dark I don’t want to look. If I look, I shall see you and then I’ll see her. You and her. If I don’t look it won’t be there. The music pushes past me and envelops you both. Swaying. The dark silk ripples on her and flows around you. The gibing candle lights a path which my eyes must follow. You are dancing without me. I am here in the darkness, I can’t even cry out. My mouth just won’t do it. Anyway, there’s no one to call for, no one to come, no one at all. Mum and Nanna left and I sent Ahmed away. There’s just me now with all my uncertainties. I don’t like them or you or her or anyone anymore. You don’t love me. You don’t even like me.

  I think the water does. It’s so gentle and free. Water can’t be hurt, scared, labelled, given away or destroyed. It eludes. It changes and slips away. Then it falls somewhere new. When you think you have it fast it just slips away. I like that. You don’t understand that. That’s why you have the bars, the needle and silent eyes. They are all there again. You wonder if I have been dreaming. Perhaps. I’m not sure. You wonder if I am awake now. Maybe. I don’t know. You wonder if I am better. I think so. In fact, I think I am good. I think I am clever. I think I’ll find my chance and slip away again when you don’t see me in the darkness. I think I’ll be awake. But I might be dreaming. There are no more certainties.

  But when she woke there were some certainties for Lizzie. Somehow, she knew that all the dreams and all the poetry dried up that night. Like everything else in her life it had never really developed, never reached fruition or amounted to anything much. The story of her life. Shit, she was sounding more and more like Mum these days. Lizzie lived but Gwennie’s girl seemed finally gone. There was just a frightened shell of a frightened woman.

  She remembered the day she found the lump in her breast and the thought of death. She had never doubted that it would be cancer. The room had been warm, and the late afternoon sun was gentle as she closed her eyes and prepared to drift off into calmness and the quiet. Her fingers slid softly across her breast. She was alert instantly. There was a lump. In her right breast. Her fingers went back, checked again, ran away from it, but again returned. There was a lump. In her right breast. The panic began somewhere in her gut and welled up. There was a lump. She was not imagining it. It was there, small, round, hand. The skin near it was tender, Fuck, fuck, fuck. There was a lump. Then she was trembling, and the panic was taking hold. Mum had found a lump. Mum had died. Now Lizzie had found a lump. This was not a story or a dream or a nightmare—well, it was a nightmare. There was a lump in her breast that could only mean cancer. Oh fuck! She had cancer. Like Mum. She was going to die.

  There were tears streaming down her face and her body felt hot and sweaty. What should she do? What could she do? She needed someone. She needed her mother but her mother was dead. Her beautiful mother, Gwennie whom everyone loved, was dead. She died of cancer. And it was horrible. She died without her hair, and she was cold in that bloody coffin when they put her in that hole in the ground. Lizzie was there and she had not stopped them. Could not stop them. Mum was dead and cold in the ground. She died of cancer. Now Lizzie had a lump, and it would be cancer, and she would be dead and cold in the dark, damp ground.

  This wasn’t a play or a story, It was real. This is how Gwennie must have felt, and she hadn’t been able to do anything about it. This was really what it felt like to be powerless. What could she do about this insidious rat eating away at her life, her inside, her being?

  Fuck. What am I going to do?

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat with her head in her hands, trying to think, trying to be calm. She heard the man moving around in the next room. With her whole body trembling, she walked in to see him. ‘I’ve just found a lump in my breast.’ She was holding on to her calmness as tightly as could be. She must not let the panic out or it would take her over.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’

  ‘I’ve just found a lump in my breast. Please. I think I need some help.’

  ‘Stop your bloody play acting. Get out of here.’

  ‘I’ve just found…’

  ‘I don’t care what you’ve found. Get out of here. Just go away and die if that’s what you’ve got in mind. Just like your bloody mother. Die and see if anyone cares. Get out of here.’

  She went back to the bed, covered her face and then the tears came with great shaking sobs. The panic was out. It took over, and it held her for the next couple of hours, until, exhausted, she fell asleep. It grabbed her each time she woke in the darkness. It waited in the darkness and silently, silently, it took hold of her, it violated her and she screamed and screamed—but silently.

  By morning, the panic was sated and it rolled away from her listlessness. She dressed, rang the office to cancel a meeting and drove to her doctor’s office. He knew her family history—well, at least as much as was relevant to her care. He had trained her in breast examination, insisted that she check her breasts regularly, refused to renew prescriptions for birth control without a full check. Now, she faced him across his desk. Just another patient with a lump in her breast. Lizzie, whoever she was, seemed to be disappearing already.

  ‘It doesn’t look good.’

  Lizzie could feel tears coming. Why couldn’t she do this calmly?

  ‘Now, don’t panic.’

  A little late, Doctor.

  ‘It could be harmless, something benign, a cyst.’

  You don’t believe that. I can see it in your eyes.

  ‘Wait here a minute. I’ll get you an appointment with a specialist.’

  Wait. Yes, I’ll wait. For how long? For how long will this thing inside me wait?

  ‘He’ll see you straightaway. Here’s the address. Are you OK to drive?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

  Lying bitch. You are not fine. You have cancer, and this man knows it and you know it.

  ‘Go straight away. He is expecting you.’

  ‘I thought it took weeks to get in to see a specialist?’ she needled.

  ‘Well, he’s a friend of mine. He’ll see you immediately. Now, don’t worry. It may be nothing.’

  Yeah! That’s why he’ll see me immediately.

  Once again, she lay on a cold sheet while a doctor prodded and pushed around her breasts and under her arms and at the base of her throat. He was gentle and quiet, and Lizzie did her best to remove herself from what was happening. Then she dressed and sat across another desk.

  This time, she heard, ‘I guess you know this is probably serious?’

  Oh fuck. Oh shit. Why can’t you tell me I’m a hysterical woman and there’s nothing to worry about?

  ‘I’d like you in tomorrow for surgery.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ she repeated stupidly.

  ‘I think you are likely to be facing the need for quick action. We’ll need to do an exploratory biopsy but all the signs are that it’s malignant.’

  ‘You mean cancer?’

  A pause. Then, ‘Yes, I think—only think mind—until we do the biopsy—that it could be cancer.’

  ‘So, this biopsy. It will show what it is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if it is c
ancer, if it is malignant, what then?’

  ‘This is only my opinion and it’s not sure at this stage, but you may be facing a mastectomy. In some cases, there’s no need to remove the whole breast, but frankly, there is a swelling under your arm and it is possible that the lymph is affected.’

  ‘A mastectomy?’

  ‘It is a possibility. You should prepare yourself for that possibility. Of course, I may be quite wrong.’

  ‘But you don’t think you are?’

  A shrug, ‘Until the biopsy no one could be sure.’

  There was a long pause. He sat in silence and let Lizzie try to take in what he was saying. She looked up, ‘What if I go home and just pretend it isn’t there? What if I just do that?’ she asked.

  ‘Then you will die.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said impatiently, ‘But everyone dies. I’ll die eventually whether it’s cancer or not. If I just went home, when would I die?’