The Private Parts of Women (13 page)

I was feeling sick. I had had an absence. Father held me by the wrist, almost dragging me along. In my absence someone had smoked his pipe. I had a taste in my mouth like spewed tobacco, a bitter juice that gnawed at my tongue.

‘I did not, I would not,' I had said but even as I cried I could taste the dirt, remember the hard pipe stem between my lips, the gurgle and choke of spit and smoke. But it was not my memory, it was someone else's like a cuckoo's egg hatching in my mind.

Mother was walking slightly ahead, lifting her feet high like a pony, distancing herself. Of course she was angry. I was a wicked coward. Look what I had done. Over and over I did things. ‘You, Trixie, you do things and you lie. There is no sense in it. Look there is tobacco caught in your collar.' She brushed it off, her fingernail catching in the crocheted lace. Of course she was angry. I felt sick. In the trees the birds sang, a sound sweet as the milk I longed to drink to take the horrible taste out of my mouth.

And then we heard the sound of a drum, and brass – a brass-band striking up. My heart flew like one of the little birds to meet the thrilling sound. It was a hymn, ‘Onward Christian Soldiers', played with gusto, not solemn but full of joy. The blue-coated band had gathered in a little square opposite the Stray where we had to cross over to reach Auntie Ba's. The banner was a sight to see, blue, gold and red:
Blood and Fire
it said. The brass sound was like fire in my blood – the boom of the bass drum, the richness of the trombone – and the cornet. Oh the cornet … it was high and bright, blaring out like brass petals opening. It sounded like hope, but hope with a fighting spirit, not girlish, hands-in-lap, patient hope. My feet stopped and my father yanked me on.

‘Utter vulgarity,' he muttered, ‘posing as religion. I ask you.'

‘Don't you like the music?' I dared to ask but he did not answer and my mother did not even look round, it was as if the band did not exist. I was ashamed to walk past like that when the music called out to me so loud and important. I smiled at one of the soldiers. Her face was lit up like an angel's face under the brim of her bonnet. She returned my smile as Father dragged me away.

I liked Auntie Ba and her big, nearly grown children, but I did not like that afternoon behind thick chenille curtains in a fire-lit parlour that shut out the spring. In a cage by the window was Bertie, a pale lemon canary, huddled at one end of his perch, his feathers ruffling through the narrow metal bars. He took no notice of us at all.

‘Does he sing?' I asked.

‘Once or twice a year, of an evening, if the late sun strikes his cage, love, it seems to set him off, then he sings his little heart out, sings something glorious,' Auntie Ba said and her words made me want to cry for the trapped scrap of yellow in the cage.

Faint in the distance through the clinking sounds of tea, the polite conversation, I thought I could still hear the beat behind the music. My jaws chewed in time as I ate sandwiches and cake. My spoon chinked like a triangle on the rim of my cup when I sugared my tea.

It was love at first sight, it was
in love
love, though I'm not sure with what. Maybe not God exactly, not Jesus, not the band or the woman's smile. I don't know. I can't explain it. It was simply love. Well it is the nearest
I
ever got. And when I thought that I felt something squirm inside me like a damp curl, a worm in the folds of my brain. That is the Devil, I thought – the bitter taste of tobacco and smoke in my mouth, the bitter taste of guilt – the Devil squirming in fear.

They left me alone in the parlour while they all went outside to look at some storm damage to the back of the house. I wandered round the room. It was a cosy room, books and knitting, a photograph of poor Tom in his uniform in pride of place on the mantelpiece – which was a little dusty. Maybe that's why the curtains were half-drawn. That was a nice thing about Auntie Ba, her unfussiness. There would never be dust on our mantelpiece at home. I sat down at the piano and tried to pick out a tune. Then I clucked my tongue at the canary. He opened one bright eye and shivered. The bottom of his cage was spattered with seed, white droppings and minute yellow feathers; a pecked cuttle-fish bone hung from the bars. It was a little cage, too little for him to fly. Seeing him in there, unable to stretch his wings, with no other birds for company, made me almost hurt. I knew I should not but I opened the door of his cage. I knew it was wrong but I was doing wrong to do right – freeing the bird. At first he didn't move. Then he hopped along his perch towards the door, cocking his head from side to side. I clucked my tongue again, ‘Come on Bertie, fly,' I whispered. And all of a sudden, startling me, he did. He hopped off his perch and darted madly round the room. I was afraid he would fly straight into the fire so I stood in front of the hearth, my arms stretched out. I thought he would tangle in my hair. I was afraid he would do that and I might have to beat him out of it, I might kill him in my fright. He perched for a moment on a chair-back, then flew up to the curtain-rail. He sang a little song, dipped his tail and did a long white dropping on the curtain.

‘Go back,' I begged. The fire spat behind me, I couldn't move in case he swooped over my head and into the flames. And then they came back, first the voices in the hall, Auntie Ba saying, ‘Another cup before you go,' Father saying, ‘Oh no, we really must be off,' followed by the opening of the door. Auntie Ba saw at once what I'd done, looking from me to the bird. Father saw too. ‘What the devil … Trixie …'

‘Sonny, coax him down,' Auntie Ba said to her second son. ‘Sonny's got a way with him,' she explained as the tall whiskery boy rubbed his fingers together at the bird.

Father grabbed me by the wrist, squeezing very tight so that tears came into my eyes.

‘Now Charles,' Auntie Ba said, ‘don't go jumping to conclusions, he's a regular Houdini that bird, always getting out.'

‘Did you free the bird?' Father said. I could feel my hand swelling with trapped blood.

‘No,' I lied.

‘Come away from the fire Trixie, love, you'll scorch your hem,' Auntie Ba said. Father let me go and I moved away just as the bird flew down. He perched on Sonny's shoulder for a moment but as he put up a cupped hand to catch him, Bertie darted off again, flapping wildly round the room, battering his wings on the curtains.

I was scared he would land in my hair and I sat down with my hands over my head.

‘What's got into the creature?' Auntie Ba said. ‘Sonny stand still with your arm out … keep calm.' Mother backed against the door but Father stood like a statue, his eyes on me. And then the bird swooped low, flew past my face and straight into the fire. He started to rise, as if he would fly straight up the chimney, his wings all in flames. Auntie Ba screamed and Sonny threw a pot of tea into the hearth, and there was a hissing and steaming and fluttering in the heart of the coals. Then it stopped and was still. There was a terrible smell of scorched feathers. And silence.

When we left, the band had gone. The place where they had stood was empty. It was getting dark, there had been a fresh shower of rain and everything glistened. The band had gone, but pasted on a wall was a row of bright posters lit by the street-lamps. Even with the speed that we walked I could read the bold black letters

BLOOD AND FIRE

LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT!

CAPTAIN MALCOLM

AND REGULAR SOLDIERS

CHALLENGE THE DEVIL TO WAR!

HALLELUJAH BRASS

WILL OPEN FIRE AT 8 am

MARCH 8th ALL WELCOME

and I knew it was a message to me. There was nothing I could do then, but I knew what I would do when, one day, I was free.

On the coach back to York, I sat alone in the seat in front of Mother and Father. They hardly said a word to each other and nothing at all to me. I watched the dark country pass by through the pale reflection of my face. All the way I thought about the Salvation Army Band, I could still feel the beat of the music in my bones. It was the cornet that made me free the bird. I was sorry of course, sorry that Bertie had died, ashamed that it was my fault. But … I felt something else too. The trumpet was like liquid fire. BLOOD AND FIRE the flyer said. I thought there was something glorious about a trapped bird flying right into the heart of the flames.

BOY

It was good when Trixie did that

I would have done that

I smoked Father's pipe to make me smell of man

Trixie got the blame

And she was very angry

I know she was but she didn't know it

Trixie doesn't know anything

But she let the bird out

I was laughing at the stupid thing

Horrible little feathers everywhere

Burning feathers stink

But I was laughing my head off

It was good when she did that 108

BULL'S EYE

Two weeks after our weekend away, I discovered that I was pregnant. Richard took a urine sample to the surgery and rang me back.

‘Bull's eye,' he said.

I said nothing.

‘Go on,' he said. ‘Aren't you pleased – just a bit?'

‘Oh … maybe,' I said.

‘It'll work out fine.
I'm
pleased.'

‘Good.'

‘Look, get a sitter and we'll go out for a curry. I'm not on call.'

My mouth filled with acid. ‘Not curry, no.'

‘Something else then. Or a film.'

‘All right.'

Robin was playing with his fire-engine on the kitchen floor. I walked round the house collecting dirty washing. I worked out that the baby would be due in May. I saw myself in the hall mirror, my hair tangled, my face fish-belly pale.

May is a good time to have a baby, I told myself, a warm, opening-up time. It'll be Taurean, a little bull. Robin was a winter baby, a child of dark skies, snowfalls and freezing night-time cries. I gave Robin some juice. I got the vacuum cleaner out to do the stairs but I felt too tired. All through the pregnancy I was ill, so tired I could hardly think, constantly nauseous yet ravenous for doughnuts and ice-cream. I put on too much weight and my own Dr Goodie nagged at me to eat salad. I grew snappy and hateful even to myself. Sex was out of the question. Dr Goodie was patient but I grew to hate his long-suffering expression. He insisted on having Pauline to stay to give me a break and I wanted to break her face and his too.

The birth was hell. I lost control. With Robin, I had stayed in control and
I
did it,
gave
birth. It was something I could do. It was almost as if Robin co-operated, that's what I think now. And when I held him in my arms for the first time and experienced that electric shock of love I was changed. Everything was changed, the colours of my world, everything.

Billie was two weeks' late. I was a belly on legs, a child's cartoon, a laugh, too grotesque in the end to leave the house. Richard wanted me to have a home birth but I didn't care where I had it. I just wanted the thing out of me. I tried to tell him how I felt. ‘I don't love it,' I said, my hand on its struggling bulk. ‘I can't help it. I don't know why.'

‘Of course you don't,' he said. ‘How can you till you've seen it? It'll be all right, you wait.'

But I knew I hadn't felt like this about Robin. I'd started to love him even as an abstract thing. Even before I'd felt him move inside me, I'd felt the beginnings of love. But I couldn't say any more, my words sounded wicked even to myself.

Billie felt it. I know she did. She knew that I did not want her. That's why she was late, she didn't want to be born at all. The labour started slowly, a couple of days of grudging contractions, the odd strong squeeze, a reminder of what pain was. I knew it had really started when I woke early one Saturday morning but I did not say. I crept downstairs and sat in the kitchen drinking tea. The sun was bright on the quarry-tiled floor, the ferns on the window-sill, Robin's cars on the floor, a sticky splash of yesterday's Ribena that I hadn't wiped up. It was not yet six o'clock and Robin was still asleep. Richard had murmured a question-mark as I got out of bed.

‘Loo,' I'd whispered. ‘Go back to sleep.'

It was rare to be alone in the quiet of early morning. The pains were spaced out but strong. I tried to remember how to breathe. I had been so clued up with Robin, now I could hardly remember.
By tonight you will have a new baby
, I told myself and I think I did feel a filament of excitement. It was started. It was inevitable now. It was as if I had got on to a train, slow and speeding-up that would not stop. I could not get off until the end of the line. Half-an-hour's peace first, before I woke Richard. I almost resented the thought of letting him into it, not just that, letting him take control. He would be all efficiency and phone-calls, all heartiness and professionalism. It was my body, not his. I ate a bowl of Robin's Rice Krispies. The sun was warm on my bare feet. I felt balanced, momentarily, a sensation I had forgotten. For a few quiet moments I
was
in control.

I heard Robin waking, talking to himself in his room, singing.
The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round
. I heard him getting louder, fidgeting, then the creak of his bed, the pad of his feet on the floor. I stood up thinking I'd intercept him before he woke Richard but as I got up there was a gush of hot water between my legs and then a pain that is not describable. It was too big to be mine. It was another presence in the room. The bright kitchen swirled around me, inside rocks ground and churned. I must have cried out I think, I don't know.

‘Mummy,' Robin called and his voice was high and clear like a bird's. I heard him padding down the stairs, both feet on each stair, counting. He came into the kitchen.

‘Whatsamatter?' he asked. I was half-standing holding on to the table. ‘Whatsat?' He looked at the spreading pool on the tiles. I could not move or stand properly, the contraction held me like a vice. I couldn't breathe.