The Exhibitionist, page 3
‘He wasn’t so bad,’ says Ray, who never met him. ‘Whereas Carmel Brophy is a saint.’ But she’s old and tottery, back in Limerick, and unmentionable, because Ray cries instantly at the thought of his own mother, ‘Mother’, whom Lucia took care of because Ray found it too upsetting.
‘Haven’t you got anything better to wear,’ Ray had asked this morning as she left, prodding her collar. ‘Remember who’s arriving tonight.’
‘I’ll change later,’ she said.
‘But not too . . .’
‘Not too flash. I know.’
‘The Nakamura bloke isn’t here for you, although he’ll probably chance it. We just have to accept,’ said Ray, ‘that, when we met, I was the star, gave you endless leg-ups and now, thanks to me, your time has come.’
‘But yours has! It hasn’t gone! And it will again. This is the start.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Ray.
It’s a lot of space to fill: the brand-new gallery in the Guildworkers’ Hall. Larry Nathaniel, who claims to own it, says there’s room for ‘fifty small or thirty medium, if you hang them right’.
Last year, when Ray decided her tiredness was getting ridiculous, she went on a conservators’ kintsugi course in Oxford; the lizard-coloured canal, horse chestnuts and church bells, lacquer ground with gold dust to fill in the cracks in broken porcelain. She wanted to stay but he said he needed her in London, so she took the train there and back all week.
Is she dawdling, or thinking of art? Here are those horrible mottled hydrangeas; she touches a petal, considers all the Snow Whites poisoned by sugared almonds, apples, rings and combs and grapes, wipes her finger on her trousers. Not every sculptor dies young. Moore: eighty-eight. Hepworth: seventy-two and perhaps she was careless; Rodin: seventy-seven; Caro: eighty-nine. But Lucia will. Given her predisposition, the nasty little insight she has already had into her genes (‘Think of them as a book,’ murmured the too-intimate doctor, his knees almost touching hers as he zipped round her in his office chair, ‘whose language we are only beginning to interpret’), she won’t live long enough to be what she used to want to be.
The same looping thoughts; here’s the lovely moss-wall, here is the certainty that she brought it on herself. Her family history, for which a weary nurse-practitioner printed out a key (◯ for certain cancers; ◯ for accident; □ for suicide) showed nothing, as she put it, of interest.
The whole experience was very upsetting, Leah had pointed out, for Ray.
‘Why for Dad,’ Lucia asked her daughter, ‘particularly?’
‘Think about it,’ said Leah. ‘Intimations of mortality, yeah?’
‘But it’s my dead relatives.’
‘I know,’ said Leah. ‘But he feels it so much. He cried, Mum. You know family is everything to him.’
None of the hospital leaflets mentioned this constant scratching-away at sanity, the omnipresent fear. Death hums everywhere, planting its seeds. Was her own doom sealed by the industrial washing powder Ray insists they buy at Costco? Or the economy matches she uses for her endless pointless maquettes? Sometimes she can feel malicious fibres multiplying, accreting calcium cases. Could the blackness have begun in her own childhood: pounds of penny sweeties, no sun cream ever, leaded petrol, everything fried and crispy-crumbed and sugar-dredged? And the anxiety; isn’t that fuel for those bastard cells? What about right now: WiFi and diesel; progesterone in the tap water; toxic deodorant; urban blackberries; the hormonal disaster of milk, yoghurt, all her favourites; the impossibility of affording organic food, of eating food at all?
No one warned her about sex, either. If they had, she might have been prepared.
Early on the morning of Lucia’s operation, she went to be injected with radioactive dye. Ray came too, with Leah; ‘Dad’ll need support.’
He charmed the nurses, explaining how he had tried to come to all of his wife’s appointments; it was just that work, or his legs, or long-booked tickets to see Bob Dylan in Manchester, conspired to keep him away.
Then the handkerchief came out. ‘To think that I could lose her, when I—’
‘Dad,’ said Leah, ‘I know. Poor man, it’s so horrible for you. But she’s not actually dead. Why don’t I get you a lovely Coke?’
They had arrived as Imaging opened; an elderly cleaner pushed a mop carefully around every chair leg while Ray dozed. When at ten the scanner was free, Leah, who had been a first-aider at school so is, in Ray’s eyes, virtually a doctor, confidently reassured her mother, then hurried back to Ray behind a rubbery curtain, designed to protect family members from gamma rays while they waited.
Lucia, on her back in the machine, was in a desperate trance, like a rabbit hearing the hawk. The actual surgery was scheduled for one. The male technician, wearing stained blue scrubs, approached her to insert something into her breast, possibly the sentinel-node tracing wire – it felt like a nail – then inject the dye and she realized nobody had mentioned whether or not it would hurt.
It did.
Three years later her mind still winces at that searing pain, like a burn around which the skin whiskers and puckers. Other men in blue were holding her down, forcing the needle in, but, to their collective surprise, it was unable to penetrate her areola. They pushed again. That was only the first time. They had to do it twice more.
Lucia screamed. She knows this because afterwards, gown removed, dressing taped on, back in the clothes she had decided were appropriate for this, her last day of womanliness, and will never wear again, as she weakly followed her husband and daughter back down the passages towards the mini-cab (Ray had insisted they all rushed home before the surgery ‘for a good lunch’), Ray and Leah discussed what they had heard from the waiting area. Ray was sweet. He took Lucia’s arm. Then, as he arranged himself in the passenger seat, Leah expressed concern about the trauma he’d just endured.
‘They didn’t even shut the door,’ she said. ‘Just that carwash flappy thing. We could hear everything. Jesus. My poor Daddy. How’s he supposed to cope with that?’
5
Jess is on the wrong side of the carriage, of course, gazing at the East Coast over a pitiful Y9 Anne Boleyn essay. Everything looks better from the other direction. The idea of London makes her skin feel sticky, as if lunacy is catching. Is she sweating more than usual?
Definitely not. Stop looking for signs.
A pit is opening in her chest. Boots, Waverley Station, is far behind her: a lost paradise. She hadn’t let herself think it through, but now . . .
It all started because she and Martyn still hadn’t had sex for her birthday, weeks and weeks before, and she has always feared a sexual wasteland. In truth, they, together, are not all she had hoped. Martyn’s approach is cheerfully straightforward. Sometimes she’ll lose track in the middle, her mind brimming with self-consciousness, comparisons, doubt. But, despite everything, she wants action; at least, she used to. She wanted the theory. She missed getting up to pee, feeling that stirring soreness which said: he still wants me. I have been found.
Waiting for him to show interest was humiliating; trying to interest him was worse. Without sex, she’d say, we might as well be flatmates; the whispering and giggling was always their best point, discussing their friends’ kitchens, their colleagues’ pasts, her father’s hilarious rudeness. Ray is endlessly interesting, at a distance, but, on London visits, she’d lie in bed for hours, listening to them laughing downstairs: furious as a forgotten bride.
So, Saturday night, November closing in, and she’d thought: enough missed fucks. Let’s bundle them all together and have them now. I’m not ready for passionlessness. To make our love better, I have to be brave.
At bedtime, she made an overture.
Trousers off; stripey top off. Come on: knickers definitely off. Like a sacrifice, she approached the bed, pale in her black bra. Her every hair stood on end, announcing itself in the chill, as she waited for him to sense her powerful almost-naked presence.
Martyn was curled on his side, breathing deeply as if unconscious; then, with a huge sigh, he turned. Dear God, he’s an awful actor.
‘Is that,’ he muttered unnecessarily, ‘you?’
‘No. I mean, yes.’ She plopped down on his costly mattress: he calls it his dowry. It doesn’t shift. Jess is not, as her father says, a wisp of a girl but it is so solid, so packed with lambswool and swans’ down, that it makes her back ache. ‘Um, hi.’
‘Mm. What . . . is late.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We, I mean, I could, if you like—’
‘Wha’?’ But he moved his knee a little nearer. She heard him swallow, moistly.
Stupid girl. Stupid baby. ‘Come here,’ she said, dry mouthed.
He didn’t respond. They looked blindly into each other’s eyes. He scratched his calf with a grating sound; she held her breath. The room was thickly dark. The night was stillish. Surging out from beneath the quilt like a god, or a nightmare, he moved closer. She could hardly see him; when he touched her knee she gasped. Her epidermis, each juicy follicle, awaited the next step, but the darkness, which she had thought would help, magnified. Then he moved his hand.
‘This is good,’ he said. ‘Your inner thigh.’
It was like a biology lesson. Her hands moved up his narrow flank towards his hip, his waist; she stroked his chest. She expected him to say, ‘Why are you doing this?’ but he seemed to accept that she wanted him, or something. Then she lay back. Hurry, she thought. It was too dark to see his face but she felt the presence of parts: his buttery blue stomach, the furry blackness. He kissed her neck.
‘Mmm,’ she said. She should be excited too. She put her hand a little lower. He shifted above her; off with his pyjamas. For a moment he seemed to be supporting his entire weight on one arm; he could let go and crush her. He was right there, between her thighs, doing the thing she is never quite able to believe they’re allowed to do.
And afterwards, in the warm almost-silence, she said: ‘Hey. You did use one?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Didn’t you? You know. Love? The doctor said, because of Mum, I shouldn’t be on the . . . we talked about it. We were definitely doing condoms.’
‘Oh . . . yes, yes. Don’t worry.’
She grasped his wrist with both hands. ‘Hang on. You did tonight. Didn’t you?’
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s fine,’ and he put his arm around her shoulders, like a brother.
Nineteen past four. She keeps missing the highlights: where the sea before Alnmouth beats below a sheer rocky drop; the crime-scene farmhouse with a car-skeleton in the hedge, patio furniture facing the tracks. Her thoughts spiral around a single point: Martyn, with whom she should be happy.
She finds herself assessing little houses, the smaller the better, imagining herself alone in a signalman’s cottage, an allotment shed. Quiet breakfasts; wind; solitude; she’d be the witchy-haired woman of her father’s deepest scorn.
When her sister rang about this stupid exhibition, Martyn was out, running Film Club. Jess, back from work, was thinking of writing him a letter. Leah’s always indignant that she can’t talk during school hours; they kept missing each other, growing more irritated.
‘Do I really need to be there?’ she asked her sister, once she had understood that there was no crisis. ‘It’s term time.’
Normal adult children don’t rush back for every family event. She needed something to break, slammed open the fridge for wine. ‘I can’t . . . why don’t I just come down for the opening? I don’t mind doing it all on the Saturday.’
‘Don’t be stupid, you need to stay at least the weekend. Dad’ll feel that y—’
‘It’d be a rush,’ said Jess, ‘but I absolutely don’t mind.’ She thought of them all on top of each other, piglets fighting for the teat; took a swig from an open bottle. Cold red flooded her tongue; she licked her teeth. Careful with the sloshing noises; Leah and their father already insist she’s living a life of tsarist luxury: pipers piping, oysters, velvet. Everything is a problem, because she is officially the lucky one. Leah is thirty-two, still lives at home, has never had a boyfriend, and she’s extremely pretty, says their father. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just a fact.’
‘You know how much Dad lives for family festivities,’ Leah reminded her. ‘The Friday will just be us lot, but celebratory. And then on the Saturday the cousins will arrive, you know he loves a house-full, and then it’s the PV and a proper catered . . . Mum was angling for, you know, crap, assorted nuts, but Dad deserves a feast. Doesn’t he.’
‘But that would cost a fortune.’
When their father’s at his finest, he’ll insist on giving you his own scarf, or turn up with armfuls of flowers. He’ll hug you in public, cry with pride. Wary daughters can be lulled into trust; this time, you think, it’ll be different. Then he’ll promise you a camera and buy it for your sister.
There was a pause. She could almost hear Leah choosing which card to play. ‘It’s family. You have to come.’
Jess thought of wives of the chieftain in his compound; brood mares. ‘I don’t think he’d mind if I stayed away.’
‘He’d be gutted. Honestly,’ Leah insisted, ‘he’s mellowed. His bark isn’t nearly as bad as his—’
‘OK, fine,’ Jess said, taking a gulp of wine so big she could feel its pressure against her ears. ‘Let’s not start. But catering, seriously?’
And there was an odd warmth in Leah’s voice when she said: ‘You know Larry’s son, um, Pablo, he owns – runs – that amazing pop-up place by the Camden Overground –’ but, by that time, Jess had started worrying about what to wear.
The thought of being judged by her father still makes her catch her breath; everything she does comes with his silent commentary, a one-man chorus of contempt. He’s saying ‘fancy’ when she orders coffee, or reads in the bath, or turns on a side-light; he’s there to remind her she dresses like a grandma and talks like Jean Brodie. She tries to prise his vision from hers. But now Martyn’s at it too, editing their lives on Ray’s behalf.
‘Mm,’ he’ll say approvingly. ‘Orange: Ray’s favourite,’ or reminds her to knock when she sees a magpie.
Maybe her father would be sweet, this time. He might have changed.
‘Why can’t you think about his feelings?’ Leah was saying tearily. ‘Don’t make that face; I can hear it. Come on, you’ve done your bit. Teaching. “Scotland”. You really need to come home.’
The walls were closing in. Jess swiped wine from her chin. ‘I have,’ she began, unconvincingly, ‘my own life.’
‘We are your life,’ said Leah. ‘Martyn gets that; why don’t you?’
Martyn denies, fiercely, passionately, that he and Leah have private conversations. He thinks Leah is angelic, just as their father does. Only Jess sees that Leah is a politician, a dark horse, a perfect courtier. She knows how to play people and Martyn, who used to support Jess in everything and now takes Leah’s side, is fooled.
He’s seen only the surface. He’s missed the blighted Christmases, the stilted angry birthdays. As the son of a loving mother, he can’t comprehend how bad it can be. When his monthly letter from Marion Clough, his mother, arrives, via the letterbox bang outside Marion’s Pets on Kilwinning Road, he reads it quickly, goes quiet for about two seconds and then is his usual unrufflable self, as if a pebble has dropped into a pond. He has cleaved unto the Hanrahans and, up to a point, they have to him. Leah often wonders, aloud, how they ever did without him; they agree Jess did well. Last year, on the train back, Jess and Martyn had their worst ever row, when he quoted Leah saying: ‘She’s much nicer since she met you.’
Her chest tightened with a forgotten feeling, like a mussel closing its shell.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, ‘why you just can’t love them.’
‘I do!’
‘Not enough,’ said Martyn.
He called her Cordelia, although he meant Regan. It stained this journey, the castles and foam-splashed rocks, diagonal hawthorns, all the views she used to love. He says she’s oversensitive; that she ought to recover as quickly as he does. ‘Couples fight,’ he says. ‘Look at your parents. You need to learn to bounce back, or you’ll never really mature.’ Afterwards, her diaphragm felt hollowed out, like a rotting tree doggedly continuing, in the absence of anyone wanting it to. Even when they’re getting on, he asks non-questions like: ‘Isn’t it great that your family loves me?’ and ‘I really hardly mind your flaws. We’re lucky that we never annoy each other.’
The nose-ringed man opposite, on the right, i.e., left, side of the train, is reading a business book about overcoming the devil, not even glancing out of the window, let alone at Jess. Briefly, as the fiery waters of home closed over her, she forgot she’s on her way there. The thin thread of self-disgust doubles back on itself, crosses, loops: another knot. He’s on miniature Prosecco number three. Soon it would be reasonable to go to the toilet again. She’s on high gusset-alert. Martyn’s obsessed; he says he’s keeping track. After sex he looks triumphant, as if he expects her to be instantly great with child. Which is stupid. She’s not pregnant. She shifts in her seat, hoping for the stomach-ache that doesn’t come.
Despite his lack of height and hair, his bachelor intransigence, Martyn has an attractiveness; he knows it. Other women think he’s their discovery. He says he’s still courted by eager school mothers, his ex-girlfriend Sam the professional viola-player and triathlete. ‘But we’re the love of each other’s lives, aren’t we.’
He’d been so stressed at his last school, had been sure that Dalziel’s, where Jess taught, was a paradise. Then there was the incident at the York Viking Experience and bingo, Dalziel’s needed a new Geography teacher. It was often difficult at lunchtime: Martyn expecting them to eat together in the corner seats, picking bits out of her lunchbox, hyper-alert to every perceived compliment and then, at home, going through it all again. Jess can’t always generate the depth of interest he requires.
