Eat My Heart Out Page 25

  Gabriella laughed. ‘Oh, Steph, you can’t generalise about all fathers.’

  ‘True,’ said Steph. ‘The problem was that Heloise and Abelard weren’t careful enough. They took risks. Because they were both literate, they wrote to each other. The letters survive.’ She stared down at Dr Kyle. ‘Have you read them?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Oh, you must.’ Steph became wistful. ‘They are too beautiful. The sentiment is so – there. They described in detail how they made love in a church, I think it might have been Notre Dame. This being the eleventh century I’m talking about. Maybe it was an act in praise of God – but it was punished as an act against Him.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Heloise’s father was a powerful man of the cloth and he simply had to send his wayward daughter to a nunnery,’ said Steph. ‘Abelard, on the other hand, was castrated.’

  Dr Kyle twisted harder.

  ‘Oh, you like that, do you?’ said Steph. ‘Gabriella.’

  Gabriella flipped open her pouch of instruments and produced a small scalpel. She handed it to Steph.

  ‘Like this,’ Steph said. ‘Like this.’

  She cut off Dr Kyle’s balls with dexterity and threw them in the waste-paper bin, which was standing clean and empty under the desk, ready for the next girl.

  Twenty

  I tried to enter the church near our flat in Clapham, but a man of the cloth said: ‘Sorry, we’re closing,’ and shut the door in my face. I wanted to ask for forgiveness. I went round the side through the bushes. I could hear the murmur of a prayer meeting through the window. Bespectacled women had their heads down, Bibles open in their laps. I wanted to tell them all what had happened, but Steph had instructed me with unnerving calm as we drove back to London from Cambridge in the dawn light that if I ever uttered a word, she would ensure that my tenure on the Mental celebrity spokeswoman circuit had ended before it began. ‘But I don’t want to be on it,’ I said. She seemed not to hear. By way of a bribe, she said she’d organised a spot for me on Sunday Brunch, a live Channel 4 morning chat show – very blokey and jokey, but you want to reach outside your target audience, don’t you?

  ‘Who is my target audience?’ I asked her.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, flitting a strand of peroxide hair off her face. ‘The mad, the bad, the sad – women, basically.’

  I managed to get in the back door of the church and joined the prayer group. The man of the cloth handed me a Bible, but he didn’t tell me the page so I had to read over the shoulder of the woman sitting next to me. She looked Scandinavian, around forty, with albino-blonde hair. She smiled and pointed to the passage.

  The man sitting next to her raised his hand: ‘But why did God make him sit in ashes while he scraped broken pots over his skin?’

  ‘Darling,’ said the Scandinavian woman. ‘It’s broken pottery, not pots. It was Satan’s suggestion.’

  ‘But God told Satan that he could suggest whatever he wanted.’ The man looked like a banker made redundant; he was rumpled and boyish.

  ‘God was testing Job,’ said the man of the cloth. ‘That’s where the boils come in.’

  I raised my hand. ‘Excuse me, what religion is this?’

  The circle swivelled to look at me.

  Then the Scandinavian woman laughed. ‘This isn’t a religion,’ she said. ‘This is a faith. We include all religions – we’re omnists.’

  ‘Only on the weekend,’ said her husband.

  Nick was pouring Campari into glasses, cross-hatched and solid. I wanted to get my hands around that glass. I wanted to hold something tightly for a very long time and never let it go. I checked my phone; there was a message from Steph. I didn’t read it. I heard a siren in the distance and pinched my twenty-denier tights until a hole and then a ladder ran down my thigh. ‘Oh, forgive me,’ I said, rubbing the ladder.

  Toril the Scandinavian looked at my hand, rubbing. Nick, who was in fact a banker made redundant, looked too. Their living room was decorated entirely in cream so that the Campari appeared like a vicious red threat.

  The siren reached its peak and then died.

  ‘Thank you so much for having me here,’ I told them, gulping the drink. It tasted like blood too thin to be used for a blood transfusion. I needed a blood transfusion. Someone, somewhere, needed a blood transfusion. I tried hard to make the cream walls transform into a carte blanche, a means to start again, but the sun passed behind a cloud at some great distance and it all became dirtied with shadow.

  ‘It’s our pleasure,’ said Toril. ‘Please. Tell us a little about yourself. Tell us about your journey.’

  ‘My journey? Oh, I don’t have one of those.’ I tried to laugh.

  ‘Everyone’s on a journey,’ said Toril. ‘Even Nick.’

  He flopped into an armchair and grinned like a fool.

  ‘Life is a journey,’ Toril continued. ‘Only, it doesn’t end.’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘No. Life goes on and on. It goes on and on and on.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘I’m looking forward to the end. I think it will be a blessed relief.’

  ‘Never say that.’ Toril moved over to the mantelpiece, picked out a book, and handed it to me. ‘Have you read it?’

  It was The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. I shook my head.

  ‘You must. I can give you a reading list if you like. There’s so much to read!! Once you realise that you’re on a journey.’

  ‘Life is a constant process of self-improvement,’ said Nick. ‘At least in this house.’ He’d already downed his Campari.

  The drinks cabinet looked antique; wooden owls with electrified eyes were entwined with stems that metamorphised into snakes.

  ‘Nick has much time on his hands these days,’ said Toril. ‘So he is free to explore.’

  I checked my phone; there was a message from Dave:

  Woke up this morning feeling buzzin . I’m like a baby with a rattle now that I’ve got you.

  I wrote:

  Dave, I don’t know if I can be your rattle.

  I still didn’t open the message from Steph.

  ‘Do you have any spare rooms here?’ I asked Toril.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Nick and I are childless, sadly. It was one of our greatest misfortunes, but we’ve had to clamber over adversity to become stronger. Erm.’ She held out her empty glass to Nick.

  There was another cabinet, bigger, its façade teeming with a greater diversity of wildlife, in the right hand corner of the room.

  ‘It’s our wunderkammer – our cabinet of wonders,’ Toril explained. ‘Toys. Have you ever heard of the tragedy of success?’

  ‘Is that a band?’ I felt my phone vibrate. It was Sebastian:

  I have to see you.

  ‘No,’ said Nick. ‘It’s a philosophy that Toril had time to concoct despite being the sole breadwinner.’

  ‘I made it up on the tube,’ said Toril. ‘On the way to work. And compounded the finer points at a retreat that Nick and I go to in Idaho called Skearth. The name is a fusion of sky and earth.’ She smiled at some fond memory. ‘The tragedy of success is what afflicts the very successful, those who are predisposed to win. They suffer a superabundance and so run the risk of exploding.’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’ I nodded. ‘That’s like how I felt after Finals. It’s what Nietzsche talks about in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The prophet comes out of the wilderness after so many years of being alone because he’s got so much honey that he can’t contain it. He’s got to give his honey to … someone.’ My eyes met Nick’s.

  I excused myself and went into the garden to smoke.

  I paced in a circle seven times.

  Then I opened Steph’s text.

  I told him that if he presses charges, the President of the college will receive an anonymous email about his affair. He claimed that he wasn’t having an affair but I said no doubt you were thinking about having an affair. We all saw the way he was looking at that history of art piece of ass.
I said I’d tell about the others too. He’s married with children. It will finish his career. Plus does he really want everyone to know that he’s got no balls. Steph

  The message from Dave was full of unhappy emoticons. He said that he wanted to hold me right now. I replied that it was the middle of the afternoon and people only hold each other at night. He replied straight away that he would hold me day or night, which I was sure was a song lyric. Finally I wrote:

  You can have my emotion or my sexuality, Dave. Which one? I’m afraid you can’t have both.

  As Toril showed me out, she made me promise that I would return to the church the following week, when we would be studying the Book of Leviticus.

  I arranged to meet Dave for lunch at Lorelei on Bateman Street in Soho. I texted Sebastian and told him to come along too.

  When I arrived, Dave was sitting in front of the wall mural of the Rhineland mermaid, waving to her doomed sailors. Her naked breasts and long blonde hair were out of focus.

  ‘This place is sick,’ said Dave.

  ‘Freddie and I used to come here all the time when I worked at William’s,’ I said. ‘Everyone comes here. Media people, film directors, everyone.’ I opened the menu. ‘I think I’ll have the penne ragù. I always have that.’

  The waitress came over; he ordered the same as me. I changed my order to the amatriciana.

  ‘I thought you said you always have the ragù?’ said Dave.

  The waitress went away.

  The restaurant’s front window was fogged artificially so that the view of the street was obscured. Still, I saw the blond beast himself come striding up Bateman Street.

  The bell rang.

  Sebastian stepped inside and shook off the snow.

  ‘Hey,’ said Dave. ‘Isn’t that the guy from last night?’

  Sebastian was flushed and intensely good-looking from the cold. I stood up and he kissed me hello. When Dave stood up too, I saw that Sebastian was taller than him.

  ‘Hey,’ said Dave.

  ‘Hey,’ said Sebastian. ‘What’s he doing here?’

  They stared at each other.

  The waitress returned with our food.

  Sebastian ordered the ragù and then changed his mind when he saw that Dave had ordered it.

  ‘I’m surprised you’ve got the nerve to actually order food,’ said Dave.

  ‘Why?’ said Sebastian. ‘I’m hungry.’ He ordered the T-bone steak, the only thing on the menu that cost more than £5.

  ‘I want a steak too actually,’ said Dave. ‘Yeah. I really feel like a steak.’

  ‘But your food’s already arrived,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I want a steak and pasta. The pasta is only the starter.’

  Sebastian had brought along his fishing tackle. He propped it against the table. He started talking about how Allegra was on the verge of totally smashing it and how he was so in love with her, more in love than ever.

  Dave relaxed.

  When Sebastian’s steak arrived, I said: ‘You know, it’s a real shame. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone but I haven’t killed either bird.’ I pushed my plate away.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Dave.

  ‘Doppelgängers are supposed to die when they see their twin,’ I said. ‘But you’re both still alive.’

  I walked out.

  When I got back to the flat, Samuel was bursting balloon animals with the back of his diamond stud earring. Freddie was screaming in his underwear about how not every single person in the world wants to curl up in a little ball and watch Disney cartoons all weekend.

  ‘Has anyone seen my wedding dress?’ I said. ‘I’m going to see this old guy, James, and he wants me to wear it. I wore it to the awards thing but I can’t find it anywhere. Maybe I left it there.’ I moved to make a cup of coffee, but Samuel barged into me and pointed the back of his stud in my face.

  ‘You brought me back to him,’ he shouted. ‘You only did it to get revenge on me for being related to Allegra, didn’t you?’

  I said nothing, holding the kettle.

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  The crazy woman was standing outside Clapham Common tube. She was wearing my wedding dress. She had a black eye. Her cheek was bruised. There was no sign of the doll.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘That’s mine. That was my mother’s.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She looked the other way, towards the common. The wedding dress didn’t fit her; I could see that it wasn’t done up at the back and her arms made the sleeves bulge. She had slipped her grimy fingers through the lace gloves. The hem was already blackened. There was a rich brown stain on the front of the skirt.

  ‘Give it back,’ I said. ‘I’m going to have to get that drycleaned now. I had to wear this.’ I gestured down to my white halter-neck summer dress from Primark; it was the only white thing I could find. I had teamed it with leggings and a short black blazer.

  ‘You look chic,’ she said, dully. ‘You look young. You look like you could do anything. So why are you complaining?’

  ‘Give it back,’ I whined. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘No.’ She opened her arms wide; I heard a rip.

  ‘Where’s your baby?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Have you heard of death? It’s what happens to us.’

  I got on the tube without the dress, and read Falling Out of Fate:

  The turning figure of modernity is the figure turned against itself, turned on itself. She is the figure who has grown from a child into an adult and learned on the way that in order to live at all in this fallen world, she must contain and control what she feels to be most natural. She learns that nature means violence; she does violence to nature. She does violence to herself. But what is lost along the way is a tragedy of the highest order. What is lost can never be regained, but it is remembered. Remembered as the hope of love.

  I had never been to North Greenwich before.

  I expected a baroque villa, too large to fit in the city, but James lived in a red-brick retirement village. The river was near. I rang the bell, and waited.

  And waited.

  Eventually a woman came to the door. She was about his age. She wore a red dress and bifocals. I could tell that she had been pretty.

  ‘Hello?’ she said.

  ‘I’m here for … the pussies?’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘Pussies?’

  ‘The pussies with the blue fur and the blue light. In the blue mountains.’ I paused. ‘With the monks.’

  ‘Monks? My dear, I think you’ve got the wrong address.’ She tried to close the door.

  I blocked it. ‘The pussies from the refuge?’ I said, desperately.

  Someone was coming from further inside the building.

  The woman turned back.

  James appeared, his comb-over not so slick, a red napkin in his hand. He stopped at the end of the hall when he saw me. ‘Margaret,’ he said. ‘You go and finish your dinner.’

  James came outside and closed the door behind him.

  ‘What about the pussies from the refuge?’ I said. ‘What about the refuge?’

  ‘Wasn’t it you who adopted the pussies from the refuge, Ann-Marie?’

  I said nothing.

  He looked very seriously at me. ‘What we had was wonderful. But it wasn’t meant to last.’

  ‘Meant to last?’ I echoed.

  ‘Meant to go anywhere,’ he said. ‘Meant to be.’

  When he opened the door to return inside, a cat slipped out. It was brown.

  I stared into the black river at Greenwich as though I could divine my future there.

  At Clapham Common, I got the crazy woman by the arm and told her to take me to her baby.

  She looked at me suspiciously. Her black eye was really terrible.

  We walked across the darkening common together, slowly. There seemed to be something wrong with her legs. The cars formed a ring of ligh
t around us. We walked all the way around the fenced-off area until we reached the filthy hut on the edge of the bowling green. There was a gap in the fence. We hid her trolley and got through. I watched my mother’s dress get more and more soiled as her old knees raked through the dirt. There was a mountain of rubbish, hidden by trees. Prams and TVs and Hoovers. I heard things moving in the bushes. I could smell fire. She took my hand; it was black but I didn’t pull away. We walked very slowly to the far corner, where branches from a big tree on the other side sheltered the earth.

  ‘Here,’ she said.

  I got down on my hands and knees and started digging.

  She stood over me.

  Finally I hit a smiling plastic face. I lifted the baby out. One of its legs had been ripped off.

  ‘They did it to us,’ said the woman.

  The birds started singing. They seemed to be shouting their song and it was hateful.

  Acknowledgements

  This book would not have been written without Hannah Westland, publisher at Serpent’s Tail, who has mentored me since 2008. Her faith in my writing, her encouragement, support, and incredible editing have been more valuable than I can say here.

  I feel so lucky to be part of Serpent’s Tail, which seems to be one of the few publishers that gives its authors creative freedom. It has been a great pleasure to work with a load of feminists! Particular thanks to Anna-Marie Fitzgerald and Ruthie Petrie.

  Thank you to my agent Jenny Hewson at Rogers, Coleridge & White for her excellent advice and encouragement.

  A special thank you to David Lister, my editor at the Independent, for giving me a chance and starting me off as an art critic. Thanks too to the Independent, and particularly the arts desk.

  Plenty of people have let me live in their houses while this book was written. Thank you so much to Mary and Rado Klose for all their kindness. Thank you too to Nigel Horne and Cassie Robinson.

  Thank you to Tom Warner, Natasha Booty, and Roxy Smith.

  Most of all, thank you to my parents. To my Dad, for unfaltering love and support. And to my Mum, for encouraging me to write and showing me the true importance of feminism.