Girl in Profile Read online

  James, I will write, let us not talk of your crime. We’ve all done things in the heat of the moment and then regretted them or not done things in the heat of the moment and regretted that. Not that you shouldn’t regret what you’ve done, of course… God, I wish Minnie would come. We could talk about her latest infatuation. Some Eton mess. Cream, meringue and strawberry cheeks. Lucky cow. Giving her kittens. That’s what boys from Eton do, apparently. Give you kittens. My late husband never did anything like that. Only that wretched Freckles from the pound and two ungrateful children. (At least they flew, I suppose.)

  Wendy has turned a conifer colour. “I shall make myself do it. I shall write to this poor unfortunate. Eleanor would have wanted it. That was the thing with Eleanor. She could get on with anyone: a criminal, a member of the aristocracy. She had the common touch, you see.”

  “Bunch of tits.” Peter Pan has discarded his photograph and is wheeling away to the whatsitcalled. “Bunch of hoodies after fatballs, those tits.”

  Flew like arrows, my children. But my bow was too strong and they flew too far. Sometimes I wish I’d been a Maori in New Zealand with a couple of boomerangs. Then I’d know the language of butterflies. Then I know they’d come back.

  Gwen

  Rodin

  Ma petite amie,

  I am sincerely enrhumé, in bed with a steam kettle and beef lozenge and that is why I could not keep our engagement. I am saddened by your accusations. You must remember I am very old, alas, and find it difficult to keep step with your demands as well as my work. You can be quite immoderate in your desires, dear Gwendolen, and I am an ancient vase that will crumble if touched too much. (I should be kept in a museum already with my own sculptures.) Try to rein yourself in like the thoroughbred horses you English girls, pardon, Welsh girls, race along the seashore, the cool breeze turning your cheeks a violent hue. Be tranquil, be calm, I implore you. Visit the bibliothèque, take a promenade, have a bath in the rue d’Odessa, draw a picture of your cat in charcoal with her tail straight up like a tree à Noël. And remember to eat well – eggs are good for your constitution as I have mentioned – your digestion will pay you later. I will bring a basket of plums from the Villa des Brillants the next time I come. Yours in tenderness, A.R.

  Elizabeth

  Autobahn

  I am tired this morning and my stomach hurts a little as it always does these days. Too many marbles. Fuck pop squit. I’m dying of a very long and complicated word and I don’t really mind apart from the grapefruit. Please let there be no grapefruit in the mornings. Just a nice cup of tea and a round of toast, like I had after giving birth. What a strain that was, despite the pethidine and the birthing pool Freckles nearly drowned in. What a life it’s been, and now it nears its end and I don’t really mind apart from the dying. Gurgle, gurgle, then it’s curtains, Tinkerbell said. Not that my late husband gurgled much. Just went off on the autobahn. German word for motorway. Eight letters, two across. Found him stuck on the crossword. Never a linguist, poor man.

  “Grapefruit, Elizabeth. Sugared segments just as you like it.”

  I can’t hear you. I’m deaf, remember, and in any case, I’m trying to sleep, though the light is streaming from the fingers of those Caldey monks, stretching through my lace curtains and trying to tickle me under the chin as though butter wouldn’t sizzle. Where’s my book?

  “Blue Room when you’re ready. We have some replies from those poor unfortunates.”

  Ah, yes, our comrades on death row. Lots of waiting around still and trying to be civil. After you, my dear. Oh no, after you. (Peter Pan will be the first if he starves himself as he intends. One Brussels sprout a day now that he is “on the continent”. He can’t bear the smell or the embarrassment.) Just reading, sleeping, breathing, dying, in littler or larger rooms depending on your bank balance. (My son has thirty-three including his greenhouses. You’d think I’d fit in one of them. I could squash up next to an auricula if I had to.)

  Tinkerbell hands out the letters. Wendy is visibly wilting. Mine is from James C Smith number 1240668. Ah yes, I remember.

  Dear Elizabeth,

  Hi, good to have the chance to know you. I’m not real good with words but will give it my best shot. If at any time you don’t understand me or have questions, feel free to ask. I have little to hide and pride myself on my honesty and respect people for theirs.

  I am a CP (capital punishment). I am forty-two years old, white, obviously a male. I killed my girlfriend. I am very upset and embarrassed by my actions. I have always had a drink problem which has helped me to fall short of most things, including being a father. I have two kids, Skyla and John. I adore my kids but, as fate would have it, I may never see them again. I have spoken to them a few times since I caught the case, but I don’t speak with my ex-wife much.

  I was raised in a poor family with little or no supervision. Mother worked her tail off to give me what I had. I am the eldest of two. My home town is north of Hannibal, Missouri (boyhood home of Mark Twain). About forty miles right on the muddy banks of the Mississippi river. I am a true river rat. A river rat is someone who lives or was raised on or around the rivers. Potosi is about seventy miles south of St Louis, about two hundred miles from home. I hope you’re still with me.

  My work history is very widespread. I’ve done everything from farming to trucking and most everything in between. I’ve done welding, mechanics, some electrician, pipe fitting, air conditioning and carpentered on occasions. Trucking is where I finished the last several years of my free life. I drove all forty-eight states and visited Canada as well. I pulled dry vans, tankers and flatbeds. The last years I pulled flatbeds and enjoyed it very much. I took life very serious and swore by the almighty dollar. I know now that money can’t buy happiness although it is a big help. I was always afraid of not having money and now I accept not having it.

  We get rec six times a week, sometimes mornings, sometimes afternoon. My house is an honour dorm so to speak. Not mandatory, just our choice. Some days when we have morning rec, I don’t make it out because I get up at 2.45 a.m. for work. We’re normally done by 6.30, but rec’s not till 8.30 so I get tired and go to bed. I do make most rec though.

  I prided myself on baseball. I’m a big Cardinals fan. That’s the legacy of my grandad. I also had a brother, Maximilian, who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge when he was 22. I don’t know why. I think God caught him. I also like Westerns. You can’t hide nothing in the desert. Even the birds pick you clean. It’s a land of truth and revelation. I know now why Jesus was tested in the wilderness.

  You say you’re a teacher and a dancer. Boy, that must keep you busy. Next time, I need to think about it some, and ask you more questions.

  May God bless you, James.

  “Are you well, Elizabeth? You look pale.”

  Oh my weary pincushion eyes. I weep for this man and what he has done or not done and the choices we make and what is life after all but burping and hurting and above all waiting in littler or larger rooms. My daughter in her laboratory, chasing viruses. And here I am having to endure them. She says they look like flowers under the microscope. She knows the language of flowers and butterflies, my daughter, as well as viruses. Viruses don’t read notices. I lost her somewhere magical, somewhere intellectual, like that Botticelli angel of a girl in Picnic at Hanging Rock. She never came back. And now my granddaughter in some Eton mess or other. Just hope she’s not preggers. Preggers with kittens.

  “He wants me to send pictures of my intimate bits,” the stephanotis is stuttering. “Says I sound like a real horny bitch. Says that his cellmate points at his genitals in the shower and makes kissing noises with his mouth. Says if I send money he can get soups and sodas…”

  Nurse Tinkerbell waves her magic wand like this and prescribes a teddy bear tranquilliser.

  “Shall we go to lunch?” Peter Pan is all saddle soap and spicy Sardinia to disguise the smell of being “on the continent”, but his feathers are warm. “For one Brussels sprout.�
��

  “Yes, thank you, Peter.”

  Gwen

  An Eroticised Terrain

  L’Homme Femme is wearing overalls and a coral necklace. No sitting in the ribs of a whale, no stays, no symbol of repression. She taps her ornamental watch – I am unpunctual – set by the clock at Montparnasse station. The room is a frozen stream and my heart echoes the stagnant cold. She will not light the stove. She will wait till I turn blue then make me do acrobatics – tuck, pike, straddle, star – to warm myself up again. At the end of the session, she will pad over on her pink puffy Pernod paws like a St Bernard dog and revive me in this alpine weariness. All for the sake of her rather mediocre painting: Madonna in Repose. I am a perfect Madonna with my oval face, my little hands and feet, my eternal smile of apology. Reined in like a thoroughbred. Gathered in like a fruitful harvest. Collected like a cowrie on the seashore where I trot my collected trot.

  “Stop fidgeting.” She cleans her brush in a glass of Pernod and studies me through lidless eyes. “You’re thinner. Someone been eating you up?”

  Rodin of course. Licked the organs clean out of my body. Left the carcass, the bones. Femur, ulna, radius, pelvic socket. They swivel, gyrate, rotate on their own. Like the models Rodin uses who swivel, gyrate, rotate, reveal their sex to him, which he sketches frantically, not even looking at his paper. Little downy plums. A basketful of vulvas. Is that what he’ll bring next time he comes? A basketful of vulvas? Rodent, I call him, when I’m angry with him – nimble eyes, bushy beard, up a drainpipe—

  “Hold the pose.”

  That is an insult. I’m known for holding difficult poses. Look at Whistler’s Muse – left foot on a high rock, head bowed, mouth open. And this isn’t Madonna in Repose, this is The Blue Madonna, Madonna with Pins and Needles, Madonna doing tuck, pike, straddle, leapfrog. I wish she’d turn into a St Bernard dog and give me a glass of Pernod or something from one of those silver decanters, but she continues to labour with her paintbrush and I continue to earn my keep and think of Rodin. Is he thinking of me? Surely the strength of feeling in my heart must resound in some auricle, some ventricle of his. I followed him once to Meudon, the Villa des Brillants, saw his thorny Rose. Ah, sweet domesticity. She was old and dignified, and dignity, in the circumstances, was truly remarkable. His dogs. The pond. I sat in the grass and peeped as the field mice played the piccolo and crickets the woodwind, tapping out their songs on the branches of trees or rubbing their wings together. I think I saw his shadow in their austere dining room. Easy chairs are for the English, he is fond of remarking. Then I went home and I’ve never felt so lost and alone. Even Edgar and my room couldn’t console me. I dreamed that night that we were on a boat, he and I, in some elemental region. The sea is the very last thing to go dark, he whispered to me. The sea is the very last thing to go dark.

  Enfin, she has done something she is satisfied with, captured a little of the mysterious human form, managed to get beneath the fictional skin of pigment. I can rest. She has bought onion tartlets and beer from Les Deux Magots. I am delivered from this alpine weariness. We chew together.

  “It is love, I suppose,” she sighs through lidless eyes.

  “Well, yes.”

  “It is always love in Paris. I came here to work in my atelier and produce great paintings, but I am surrounded by passion and distraction. The men next door share a prostitute every night for five francs. They told me. Even the air is sensual here, stiff with flower semen and the sound of insects mating. Filthy as a frying pan. Paris is an eroticised terrain. I see bodies all around but little soul. Do you think we can manage a bit of soul, Gwendolen Marie, in the next session?”

  I doubt it. Not unless Rodin gets off his sickbed and carries it here in his pocket next to his copy of The Divine Comedy – or in his outstretched hands. Doesn’t let it slip between his hummingbird fingers, doesn’t peck it to death.

  Moth

  Swallows

  The phone rings. It’s Adam. The fingers didn’t lie, after all. Adulterous little piggies about to stuff down some roasty roast beef if they’re lucky. I put on my husky-dog three-pack-a-day prince-in-the-throat just-got-a-cold voice.

  “Oh, hi, Adam.” Like I’m surprised. Not.

  Drew, who is combing Dove’s hair on the sofa, laughs. Wanker.

  “There’s been a cancellation, so if Roan wants to come to art club today…”

  “Ooh, yes, he’d love to, wouldn’t you, Roan?” Roan, who is reading a Star Wars comic, nods vaguely. Drew shakes his head vigorously. “But I’m not sure if we can.”

  “It doesn’t matter if you’re late.”

  He sooo wants me. I can see his voice travelling down the telephone wires in a sparrowful of sound waves. I’m wide open like a half-formed letter o.

  “Roan loved making the treasure chest the other day.”

  “Yes.”

  Drew sniggers, and I look at the stain on the windowsill where the treasure chest sat for two hours at most. On the pavement opposite, Hellboy from number 5 is polishing his mother’s brass door knocker, which he does at exactly the same time every day. He’s forty-five years old. One day I saw him screaming in his car like a freakin’ psycho. The sound waves looked like motherfucking bullets.

  “The class goes on till four so it doesn’t really matter what time you turn up.”

  “Oh, okay.” We’re making love on a telephone wire in full view of the sky. If one of us touches the ground we’ll both get fried. I raise my feet an inch from the carpet and try not to see Drew shaking his head, violently now. He’s spent all week trying to illuminate some godforsaken Miss-Havisham -detritus-of-a-life attic, filled with boxes of china teapots, photograph frames and school reports circa 1940, and he wants to stand upright, get some fresh air and exercise. On a day like this. With Yoda. I know. “Oh dear, I don’t think we can make it today.” My wing touches a particle of dust. Yeeoow.

  “Sure. Maybe next time.” Sound waves curl into italics, a sparrowful of ashes.

  I take my place on the red chair we bought in an Ikea sale, which doesn’t match the blue sofa we bought in a different Ikea sale. “He said it didn’t matter if we’re late.”

  “Yeah, but still.”

  “I could have taken Roan on my own.”

  Drew laughs for the third time in five minutes. “No, you couldn’t. You’d never find the way.”

  And there it is. The unadulterated, very unadulterous, truth. Even if I wanted an affair, Drew would have to mastermind the whole thing from Googling the rendezvous to pronouncing on my outfit to plucking the hairs from my chinny-chin-chin, to pruning my bush into a pleasing topiary. I’m stuck in this marriage like a lump of toffee in his teeth. Which reminds me…

  “Did you use xylitol instead of sugar in their cookies?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you put the sunflower seeds in and the spirulina and granular lecithin?”

  “Yes.”

  I read library books on the subject of children’s nutrition. I know all about the good stuff to protect against the bad stuff.

  “Darth Maul’s got a red lightsaber.” Roan looks up from his comic and his eyes remind me that we need to mow the lawn. “What does RRP 20.99 mean?”

  “Has he? Oh, good. Drew, you need to mow the lawn.”

  “No idea, son.” Winking at me.

  I even hide vegetables in tomato sauce à la Annabel Karmel, make spinach pancakes, blueberry smoothies, tangerine sorbets, sprinkle ground almonds onto breakfast cereals. When it comes to the kids I’m head of this little corporation. And it’s lonely at the top, sometimes, I can tell you. I can’t even delegate without checking all the minutiae because Drew would forget his cock if it didn’t have a mind of its own.

  “Yoda’s got monkey.”

  “Drop it. Now.”

  “Shit.”

  I don’t even let them drink carbonated water because those little air bubbles erode tooth enamel, and Wales has the worst rate of tooth decay in the whole of the UK. Dulcie
from number 5 is beckoning Hellboy in. I’ve never seen such massive hands on a woman. She must have given Hellboy’s dad an inferiority complex when she wanked him off. “In you go, Mel. Your tea’s on the brew and it’s coming to rain.”

  (Lesson number three. Do not be a toffee-sucking mother. Do not steal your kids’ teeth enamel. Let them fly high over the telephone wires in a transcendental arc. Let them fly to Africa if they have to. However hard it is to let them go, let them go. Like swallows.)

  “YODA. DROP MONKEY.”

  Yoda, as we’re calling the rescue puppy these days, simply because he did a massive green shit after eating two green felt-tip pens and his ears are starting to stick out at the oddest of isosceles triangle angles, is hightail-arseing round the room with Drew, Dove and Roan in luke-sky-warm pursuit. What kind of sick genetic mix is this? I ask myself. Collie humping spaniel humping setter humping Yoda humping dachshund humping poodle humping Jar Jar Binks. Monkey waves a felt paw from the jaws of a Cheshire cat grin and I watch Hellboy go back in, his shoulders sloping under the dead fucking weight of it all, the dead wait of it all, the love. I press my fingers to the pane and leave a perfect set of prints. I was here. I did it all. Guilty of everything. My breath creates a fully formed o, closed and sealed as clumsily as the body seals two frayed nerve endings without bothering to reconnect them first. Paralysed. Vicious. Round and round on the Circle line like the man who lost his job and went round and round on the Circle line until he met his wife going round and round herself. A line from a poem comes into my head – Louis MacNeice’s “Snow”. There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses. More than glass, yes, and if you tried to walk through glass you’d cut yourself to pink ballet ribbons. There’d be mopping up, bandages, collateral damage. And you’d never find the last few splinters of glass. They’d lodge in the carpet, on top of dust jackets ready to strike – icicle bright and snow-queen deep – like the scalpels that stab microlesions into the hearts and eyes of laboratory rats. Oh God, do you vivisect us all for the greater good? Prevent some disease in the stars and the galaxies? Is that the plan?