Mesmeris (24 page)

Jack pulled his sopping coat off me, then lifted my dress over my head, nothing like last time, all in a rush with kisses and hands everywhere. I hoped he’d kiss me like last time but no. This time it was impersonal, business-like. He peeled off my wet tights and looked away, disgusted by my legs probably. They looked horrible, sticks of waxy lard with yellowy-grey blotches. I didn’t like them either, so looked at my slip instead. My beautiful, blue-silk slip. It was dark and wet. I tried to feel the silk but my fingers didn’t work.

‘I bought it for you.’ The words sounded strange, slurred.

‘It’s lovely,’ Jack said, with a funny catch in his voice. Then he turned away and sat on the end of the sofa, his back to me. I felt weird, dizzy.

I wondered why we’d come to such a filthy place. Perhaps this was where Jack and I were going to live. We must have run away already. Maybe I’d slept through the journey. Had I been home, then, and forgotten it? But then where was my bag - the bag with my things in it, the bag I’d packed? And why was Art here? Was he running away with us, too? I didn’t mind, but I wondered where he was going to sleep.

Art left the room and came back with the stinking sleeping bag from the hallway. He threw it on top of me. ‘Jack,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

Jack didn’t move.

‘Jack!’

He still didn’t move.

‘John!’ Art said.

It worked. Jack flinched as if someone had hit him, and turned around. He didn’t look at me.

‘You have ten seconds – or I’ll have to finish her.’ Art went out of the room and closed the door behind him.

Something was wrong with our plan, our running-away plan, but my fuzzy brain couldn’t work out what. And then Jack looked at me with those blue eyes, the sad ones, and I knew.

I reached out to touch him. He jumped to his feet and moved towards the door.

Suddenly, I was wide awake. I knew exactly what was happening. Dread swamped me. ‘No!’ I tried to get off the sofa. My legs wouldn’t work so I slid them over the side and let
my body flop out after them. My head hit the wooden arm. It didn’t hurt but there was blood. I tried to crawl to the door, to stop him going out.

‘Don’t, Pearl.’ He picked me up in his arms and put me gently back onto the sofa. ‘Don’t do this to me. Please.’

I tried to hold on to him with my useless, senseless fingers. I couldn’t see him because my eyes were full of tears, because he was going to leave me. ‘You promised.’

He pushed my arms away.

‘I lied,’ he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I closed my eyes and the door clicked and when I looked, there was nothing there, just an empty space.

I didn’t cry. I stared at the door, but I knew he wasn’t coming back. He was never coming back.

So, I sat, and stared, and waited. I don’t know how long it was before the noise started, the banging and the shouting, but I was still staring when they burst through the door, yelling and waving their guns about and pointing them at me. And I was still staring when they stopped shouting, and other people came in, wearing paper overalls, and paramedics came in and wrapped me in tinfoil and put a mask over my face. They lay me on a stretcher and carried me outside. My dad was there, with his hand over his mouth. They wouldn’t let him touch me. I closed my eyes and kept them closed while they loaded me into an ambulance because, every time I opened them, there would be somebody’s face talking at me. What they said didn’t make any sense. Their mouths moved, they made a noise, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

I woke in a hospital bed with a drip in my hand that hurt and a mask over my face. My parents stood up when I pulled the mask off. Mum hugged me and said something, and then Dad hugged me and said something too. Mum bit her lip and her eyes filled with tears. Then Dad put his arms around her and hugged her and both of them cried. I watched them and wished they’d go away. Maybe I should have felt something, but there was nothing. They sat by my bed. Mum held my hand in hers, while Dad watched me with frightened eyes.

After a while, the police arrived – Jim and a policewoman. I felt something then. A sharp pain shot through me and disappeared. Hatred. I didn’t know why I hated Jim, but I did. He and the policewoman asked me questions. I knew they were questions because they looked expectantly at me every time they stopped talking. After a while, I closed my eyes. If I didn’t have to see their faces, I could almost forget they were there. Eventually, the noise stopped and I slept, and dreamed of a dark place - a wet, cold place. I was searching for something, through the undergrowth, under stones, behind the tangled roots of trees. I thought I found it, whatever it was, in a hole in the ground, in the mud, in the dark. I reached down to get it but the sides of the hole started to crumble and cave in. I tried to hold on, clutched at the grass, at the soil, but everything gave way in my hands and I fell in, head first, with the mud, and I realised it was a grave, my grave. The earth, the dark, wet, cold earth fell in on top of me, went in my eyes my mouth, so I couldn’t breathe. I woke, screaming and shaking and sweating.

I stayed in that small, white, sterile hospital room for several days and nights. I lost count of how many. Sometimes, when I woke up, there were doctors there, or nurses, or police, or my parents. I could move properly, I could get up and have a shower and go to the loo and clean my teeth, and I suppose I could have talked, if I’d had anything to say. Except I didn’t have anything to say.

Cards appeared on the metal cabinet next to my bed. I didn’t bother to look at them. They didn’t interest me.

One day, I awoke to find two people, a man and a woman standing by my bed. They talked to me, then they talked to each other. The woman left the room for a moment, returning with my parents. The man said something to them and Mum put her hands over her mouth and closed her eyes. Dad just nodded and put his arm around Mum and squeezed her shoulders. Then they all looked at me and I stared back at them. The man said something to me, and then they all shook hands and the strangers left.

Sometime later, my mother started to collect my things. Then she broke down in tears and sat on the end of my bed, her back to me. It made me feel ill, her sitting there like that, so I turned away and closed my eyes, and that made me feel ill, too, so I looked at my father while he finished packing my bag.

When they’d finished, Dad helped me out of the bed. Someone came to get us and we walked out of the hospital. It was huge, much bigger than I’d realised, corridors and lifts full of people – loads of them, rushing about and making noise. I imagined we were going home. Instead, we went in another ambulance, Mum and me, while Dad followed us in his car. I watched him driving behind us. Every few minutes, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

They took me to another hospital – grey and dark and old. The metal gates moved back automatically. They weren’t rusty, not like the others, the ones I’d seen in that place, the place I couldn’t remember. Mum pointed at some flowerbeds, so I looked. She pointed at a little copse of trees, with a funny look on her face, so I looked at that too. I didn’t mind that we weren’t going home. I didn’t particularly want to go home, didn’t particularly want to go anywhere.

A man met us at the door. The man who had been at the hospital. A nurse stood next to him. They smiled at me. I didn’t smile back. Why would I? They took us to a room on the first floor, a bedroom. The room smelled of disinfectant, and was too hot. It was stifling. I sat on the bed and stared at the poster on the wall. A landscape – fields and sunflowers. My parents put my things away in the chest of drawers. Mum put some books on the table by the window. Next to the bed, she put a photograph. The one of us all on holiday, the one where we all looked happy, because we were laughing at something Lydia said.

After a while they stopped fussing around and gave me a kiss and a hug, and left.

When they’d gone, I got up and put the photograph away in a drawer, so I didn’t have to see it. Then I went to the window and opened it. It wouldn’t open much, hardly enough to let the air in. I ripped the poster off the wall and tore it into little pieces and dropped them out of the window. They blew away in the wind. Then I sat in the chair.

I sat there until it got dark. Someone, at some point, came in with food. I didn’t eat it. I lay down on the bed and went to sleep and I dreamed the same dream, and woke up screaming and someone came in and injected something into my backside. It bloody hurt. I slept after that.

The next day, a nurse brought me two large brown paper carrier bags sealed with blue and white tape. I waited until she’d gone before I opened them. My Parka and shoes were in one - in the other, a dress, underwear, and a blue slip. I took off the pyjamas I was wearing and put on the slip. It fell over me like a waterfall. I felt better. I pushed the pyjamas through the opening in the window and watched them fall onto the wet concrete below. Then I got my other clothes out of the chest of drawers and dropped them, one by one, out of the window - everything except the ones from the paper bags. Then I sat in the chair and stared out at the rain. Somebody came into my room after a while and shouted at me. They gave me another injection, and then I slept.

I woke every day, and every day was the same. I sat in the chair and watched the rain, and then I went to sleep. For a while, they tried to make me wear different clothes. As soon as I was alone, I took them off and threw them out of the window. I wore the underwear and the blue slip, all day, every day. If they took my blue slip away, then I wore nothing. Then they would come into my room and shut the window and give me an injection.

One day, Mum brought me a present. Two more slips, the same as my slip, and a negligee, the same as my slip, the same blue, the same lace trim. They were the only presents I didn’t throw out of the window. I wore them, all blue, all the same, all the time.

After a long time, weeks maybe, or months or years, I was allowed to go outside into the grounds with a nurse. She sat me on a bench under a tree in the sun. After that, every dry day, I would go out and sit under the same tree on the same bench. Sometimes it would be a different nurse, sometimes my mum or dad or both would sit with me. Sometimes Lydia came. They talked, their mouths moved. I heard a noise. I never responded, couldn’t remember how to. I found that if I stared at them for long enough, they stopped talking and went away.

Once Jess came, but she just cried the whole time. I don’t know why she bothered to come. In the end, a nurse took her away, put her arm around her, rubbed her back. Maybe I should have done that, put my arm around her, but I couldn’t be bothered and, anyway, I wanted her to go. Why come and see me, if all she was going to do was cry? Somewhere deep inside, I knew I should have felt something but there was nothing. I just watched her cry, like I watched my parents cry, like I watched Lydia cry, like I watched the rain run down my window. I watched everything, felt nothing.

Every day they gave me tablets to take. I took them. Every day, three times a day, they gave me food. I ate it. It never tasted of anything. I was never hungry. I ate it because I didn’t want a tube put in my stomach again. Some days a doctor came to see me, some days not.

Sometimes, I was allowed to walk around the grounds on my own for ten minutes or so, watched by a nurse. If I turned my back on her, it felt as if I was alone. One day, my hand felt something deep in the pocket of my Parka. A photograph of a boy. It was washed-out and faded and torn at the edges. I considered throwing it on the ground or tearing it up and throwing it out of the window. I had a feeling it was important though, that I should keep it, so I put it back in my pocket and every time I went out in my Parka, I touched it and it was as if I had a secret, and it made me happy.

The weather became colder and the days shorter. On wet days, I stayed in my room and watched the raindrops slide down my window. Once, they tried to make me sit in a big room with a television in it, and other people in it. I wouldn’t go in. It smelled even worse than my room. When they tried to force me inside, I held onto the doorframe and kicked them, hard. They seemed surprised. I didn’t go outside for quite a while after that. They never tried to make me go into that room again.

One morning, bright sunshine woke me up. A hard frost covered the ground, so heavy it looked almost like snow. The grass and the trees sparkled in the sunlight. It looked beautiful. I opened the window and breathed in the clear, sharp, stingy air.

When they brought my tablets, I pretended to take them and hid them in the pocket of my negligee. Later, I flushed them down the toilet. I didn’t know what the tablets were for, anyway - didn’t know why I was taking them and I had a feeling they were trying to poison me. For a week, I didn’t take them. I felt better without them, more awake. They didn’t bother to check any more. As long as I behaved as usual and didn’t kick anyone, they left me alone.

The beautiful weather lasted for days and days. I loved being outside in the frost. I liked the cold. The central heating made me sick, like the musty air, like the smell of disinfectant. When I was outside, breathing in that fresh air, I really believed I was beginning to get better.

One morning, one of those lovely, sunny, frosty mornings, when I opened my window and breathed in the fresh air, I felt something, something like hope, some slight glimmer of
joy. I think I even smiled. I was in such a rush to get ready to go outside, I spilled some of my water on my slip. The silk went dark and stiff. I stared at it. That was how it was supposed to look. It was meant to be dark and wet and cold. No wonder I couldn’t get well. I’d never get well while the slip was all wrong.

I tried to remember when I felt well, when I felt normal, but couldn’t. I’d been okay in primary school, and even the first years at comp but after that it became hazy. I couldn’t remember which vicarage we lived in. Was it the modern one, with the sloping back garden that was always dark and damp, or the old, draughty one with bats in the roof and mice in the shed? No, we’d been little then, Lydia barely more than a baby, waddling around on fat, stubby legs. And I knew I’d been on holiday fairly recently, because, in the photograph, in the one of me and Mum and Dad and Lydia, in that photograph I was somewhere by the sea. Once in a while, I’d get an elusive glimpse of something, and then it would be gone. There was someone dark and beautiful that I’d loved, but it was all lost to me now, long gone into oblivion. It gave me a headache when I tried to remember.