Ménage (34 page)

Her voice in his ear, he’s trying to tell her of the way she stood so still while everyone else was in a panic of activity, of how she stared down at her own hands, of how he’d never seen anyone so out of tune with her time, of how her face had seemed timeless, like a very old painting, like a queen, like a duchess . . .

‘Owen? Don’t go quiet on me. Owen, my love! Jesus Christ, wake up, please, you fuck. Talk to me. Little brother, wake up. Wake up, Owen! OWEN!’

Her voice so far away, so sleepy. Then Saul is in his ear whispering in a new language.
Baruch atah Adonai
. Take my hand, he says, take her hand, we’re going to walk together now.
Hamotzi lechem mien haaretz
. Like four notes in a song.
Hamotzi lechem mien haaretz
. Lovely old song, so sleepy, like a prayer. Hand in hand in hand.

*

The concrete maze of estate houses. Five youths in hooded shellsuits loitered by the metal fence, kicking at cans. I stopped running so as not to draw attention to myself and got to the security door. Tried to remember the button. Most of the names had been erased so I pushed many.

— Hi, that Edna?

— The intercom buzzed and whistled and one then another voice came on.

— What? Fak off! Izzat de council?

— I’m looking for Edna.

I heard glass smash behind me and kids’ laughter. The street gang were watching, getting closer. I pushed more buttons and stared up at the many concrete windows, boarded up with metal. The intercom whistled again.

— Is that Edna? I’m looking for Dot. Is she there?

There was silence. Then a voice, maybe Dan’s, cockney.

— Fack off, ya puffy cant! Make me cam dawn there I’ll fackin’ rip yer face!

— Look, I need to know if Dorothy is there.

Just then another voice came on, speaking some language unknown to me. The buzzer buzzed. I pushed my way through the door. Up the steps of broken glass and piss and graffitied walls, I turned the corner and there was Edna’s ridiculous doorway, the plants and shoes outside. Sandals, plimsolls and definitely Saul’s hobnail boots. The ones Dot wore. She was here.

I hesitated. There was no point ringing the bell. There would be a scene and Dan’s huge bulk would promise violence. So I retraced my steps, and there at the bottom of the stairwell, under the steps, in the dark, amid the broken glass and syringes, I waited. No one came or went in what must have been an hour. I didn’t want to give up my hiding place, but needed to pee. I peed in my own space and had not choice but to crouch in it.

His boots, her feet, were the first thing I saw. Her fishnets were torn to shreds. She was dressed in Saul’s cut-off wedding dress and her bra over the top, with the wig she stole, half painted pink with dayglow highlighter pens. In her hand she clutched her video camera. I did not call out. I waited for her to get to the front door and out, before getting up to follow her.

At a safe distance I followed her as she walked back through Hackney into Hoxton. Block after block as the faces turned from black to white. McGregor Court. The Enfield cloisters. The off-licence advertising cheap booze. The George & Vulture, Pittfield Street. St John the Baptist Church. To the corner of Whitmore. She stopped and I hid myself in a doorway.

Minutes I waited and then peeked out. She had not walked home, but straight on. To the orbital streets of Hoxton
Square
. Camera in her hand. Her pace was picking up as she approached a gallery. There was a crowd of people outside, sipping wine. An opening was taking place. I recalled her words from days before – ‘Pierce, rip his face.’

— Dot! I called out.

She turned and her face scared me. Her expression beneath the streaked mascara, the moustachioed mouth, of almost total vacuity.

I ran to her. Stopped, could not touch her.

— You still here, you’re like a dog, she said. — Can’t you just leave me alone?

— You OK? What you doing here?

Behind us, the talk was loud, the many dressed up for their trendy opening, glasses clinking, cigarette smoke and flirtation in the air.

— Saying sorry to Pierce, she said, but the words seemed as empty as her eyes.

And the smile that followed was almost terrifying. And why Pierce? What had he to do with anything?

— You should go home, little brother, you might get hurt.

And she turned to walk inside, through the masses. I had no choice but to follow her.

She went round the entire party, three hundred people, whispering in their ears. They laughed as she took their video portraits. It seemed like a game. I stayed a good distance away so as not to intrude, and crept slowly closer. A woman beside me was talking to some guy, posh voices.

— Is it some kind of video diary?

— Artwork, I think, some kind of slapping game, sounds a bit daft.

— It’s been done before, Douglas Gordon, what was it called . . .?

— I think that was kissing.

From between the shoulders and glasses of the many
I
saw that Dot had lifted her camera to her eye, and a young man stood before her. He smiled then nodded. Suddenly she slapped his face. He reeled then broke out laughing. The laughter spread and then another guy came forward to Dot, offering his face. Again Dot slapped and the sound was audible. People turned to stare.

— It’s OK, someone called out, — it’s only art.

— Any volunteers? another called out. — We need to do a hundred faces!

There was much laughter and Dot had become the focus of the entire show. The couple beside me then started on performance art and Vito Acconci slapping himself. No one seemed to notice that Dot was striking each person harder and harder. It was absurd, they had started lining up to be slapped and each time, as she hit them as hard as she could, they reeled with laughter after and thanked her and gave her their cards.

I sensed a great danger and got closer. Just then, I glimpsed Pierce. He was with some foreign-looking types. Dot broke away from the circle around her and marched up to him, interrupted him mid-schmooze.

She explained the process again and told them it was an artwork, a hundred people slapped in the face. He was embarrassed, reticent, but his friends egged him on.

— OK, just the one, he said, as he went to set down his wine glass. Before he could, she lashed out at him, he tried to defend himself. His glass was in the air, smashed against his cheek, blood on his face, she screamed at him, punched his chest. — BASTARD! BASTARD! The place fell silent. People started to run, chaos broke loose.

I pushed through the bodies and hauled her away. Her camera hit the ground. I grabbed it as I pulled her outside into a run.

— Come on!

Out through the hysterical crowd, out through the
square
. She was falling everywhere, tripping, dead weight. I managed to get her onto Old Street and into an alleyway. There was a phone box, fifty yards beyond.

— Stay here, I’m going to get help, right here, I love you, OK, I love you, I’m going to get help. Trust me, OK.

She stared catatonic at the place where my face had been. I didn’t know if it was safe to leave her but there was only one thing I could think to do. The number in my pocket – her father. I ran to the phone box and tried to find change, the fucking phone wouldn’t take my money, I dialled again and again, then finally got through.

— Hello, Dr Shears please, this is an emergency.

— This is his secretary. I’m sorry, sir, but Dr Shears only sees patients by appointment. Would you like to make an appointment?

— No, it’s about his daughter. Dorothy.

It was then that I heard the touch on the door beside my head. I looked up and there through the graffitied glass was Dot. She looked at my hand and the number within it, then at my eyes. Her mouth fell open, all blood seemed to drain from her face.

— Hello, can I help you?

I swear I heard her gasp for air. She fell back as if winded, the breath forced out of her. Eyes wounded, confused, a child betrayed, looking into me, asking why, why.

— Dorothy!

I turned and slammed into the glass. She fell away from sight towards the road. A scream of cars skidding, a crash, and thud. I couldn’t get out of the box. I put my weight against the door and fell out. Beyond, two cars were crushed into each other, a flash of her legs, voices screaming. Past the wreckage she ran, between skidding cars, away, for her life.

For hours in the night I was cross-examined. The same questions over and over from the two policemen in my room.
Saul
was interrogated for three hours. I puked with nerves. One of them was in her room taking flash photos.

Night willing day, willing her return. 7 a.m. and no word and so the aching train ride to Goldsmiths. I paced outside for an hour, then, when the doors were opened, ran inside. Her tutor accosted me, asking me where she was – her degree assessment was to be that afternoon. I lied, said she was sick, said she had given me instructions for the layout of the show. All day I fought the fear with the many technical questions, the placement of screens, the plugging in and testing of video projectors, the choice of tapes. I was no artist but it had to be done, something had to be saved. I spent hours going through the video cassettes in boxes with no labels, trying to work out what her intentions had been. Back and forward to the phone to call Saul, her father, but ‘no word’ were the only words.

The screens and video projectors, when erected and plugged in, flooded the room in light, but I had no time for reverie. Three screens had been hired, so three tapes had to be chosen. I did not know which and how. There was the Rizla game and the slapping game and the dressing in her mother’s clothes, and her filming herself with her moustache – earlier conversations she’d filmed with me and Saul, laughing faces. Hundreds of hours of other things I watched in fast-forward while I fought the mounting hysteria around me from students and, it seemed, the press, the many whispers of ‘police’, ‘missing’, ‘newspapers’. I put a board over the opening to her space.

At midday the tutors arrived. I begged for more time. An hour and they said time was up. One, German, asking me if the show was ready. I had no choice, I picked three tapes. The slapping game and the Rizla and the mother’s clothes. The video technician was on hand; I told him where things started and ended and how they had to be repeated. I ran to the phone and called Saul again, but no word, her
father
the same. I came back through and after half an hour with the adjusting of projectors and distances and focal lengths, I saw it all on three screens. Flickering faces on huge screens. It did not seem like art at all, more like home videos, nothing else. I stayed only for five minutes, as the tutors took notes. A journalist tried to corner me and I ran from him.

Helpless stupid tears on the train then street then home and she was still not there. Saul seemed blood-drained. He was chain-smoking. I offered him a drink, he refused. He would never touch a drop again, he said, and would not let me put on music to kill time. He was to blame for it all, he said, he understood now. There had to be an end to it, he said, as he broke into tears. His arms reaching out for me. He had to start again he said, crying, clinging, asking me to forgive him. The phone rang and we both dived for it.

Hospital corridors endless. Saul could not face her and so I went alone. I got to the counter, gave my name, asked if it was OK, visiting hours were over. It was fine just for five minutes, they said. Her parents had been in. As the nurse led the way I asked my questions. All too abstract for the woman to answer. ‘Pills,’ she said. ‘Stomach pump.’ ‘Wrists,’ she said. I asked where this had happened, how. She had vital signs, the nurse said, hadn’t woken yet but they were confident it wasn’t a coma. ‘Here you are’ – she motioned to a door.

My Dot, not that body hooked up to intravenous drips with monitors and cables and face so grey. Her poor face as I sat beside her. I was scared to take her hand in case it would hurt, worrying over the bandages round her wrists and her IV drip. Her fingers tight like spiders. Big bandages, brown stains through the fabric.

I squeezed her fingertips. No response, but her heartbeat monitor pulsed, she was breathing, eyes closed.

Her hair – like she did that first time with scissors in the bathroom, her hair in the sink, but this time cropped almost to the skull, tufts and bloodied scabs, my poor boy-girl. And her mouth, the tube in her mouth.

A nurse came and said best if I came back tomorrow. Dot needed rest. They’d call me when she woke. They would tell her that I’d been here. Was I her boyfriend? What was my name again?

Saul was packing. He would not talk and had been on the phone for hours. Every time he put it down it had rung again he said. He’d leave enough to cover one month’s rent when he went. He was sorry, he said again and again, but he had to leave tomorrow. Something had to change and it was him, he said again, again. And again the phone kept ringing. Saul pulled it out from the wall.

Later, dark, I plugged the phone back in to wait for the hospital’s call. The line beeped. You have twenty-nine messages. I listened to the first and it was a gallery, then another – the Lieder Gallery, they wanted to talk to Dot. I tuned the ringer back on and it rang almost immediately. A woman calling from some other gallery.

On-screen was my face. Our Rizla game. I was asking, — Am I a man? To my left, the other screen – the dressing-up game – Saul and me.

Her voice. — Show me the tops of your stockings.

A laugh from a woman in the crowd around me in the dark.

Behind me was the waiting game. I couldn’t face it. My face in light, waiting for that kiss, that slap.

The voice from the first video. Saul asking, — Am I a celebrity?

I could not sleep the night before. I called the hospital and could visit at three, Dot still had not regained
consciousness
, they were doing more tests. There were hours to kill. I came to her show as soon as I could because I sensed Saul needed to be alone in his packing.

The crowds. Some laughed, some talked in whispers, others, silent like me, sat between the three screens. Waited on the next question, the next words. The videos, different in length, repeated when finished. It was impossible to look at just one. When I tried, voices came from another, or a slap.