With My Body Read online

  Always includes a link to her own website at the bottom of her weekly school newsletter, as if to rub it in that she has a life beyond all this, she has managed to be one of those ones who does it all, effortlessly (she runs a website selling bespoke wooden kitchenware along with her school duties).

  If you were content, none of this would infect you; it would just roll away like water off a duck’s back. But one woman, this woman, has become a focus for all your frustration and you know it’s unfair and paranoid and ridiculous, she’s a good person, you’re just jealous of her position and the way she’s worked out her life and it’s eating you up, can’t escape it. But you’d be happy to never see her again. Would never have befriended a Susan in your former existence, are not uplifted by her in any way; your heart doesn’t skip with happiness to see her and you need heart-lifters around you now, more than ever–it feels like you’re becoming more thin-skinned and vulnerable as you age. How can that be? That the great, raw wounds inflicted by others in the distant past are sharpening now, in middle age. You can’t gouge them out and you have no idea why; have lost your voice, your strength.

  Lesson 13

  Friendship—a bond, not of nature but of choice, it should be maintained, calm, free, and clear, having neither rights nor jealousies, at once the firmest and most independent of all human ties

  Your hand is straying into your pants, thinking of other things entirely, school dads, their spark. How one in particular, Ari, would spring you alive, back to the woman you once were. Ari, yes, he’d have the knowledge, the instinct; but you’d never do it. God no, the mess of it. Susan is still in your ear, telling you that Basti is just about to pass his first flute exam, can pick up any piece of music and just play it, he amazes her. (Rexi, God love him, is on page six of his guitar book and unlikely to progress.) And the coffee morning, ‘Can you run it, babes?’ Of course, yes. Susan will bake some muffins for you: ‘I know you’re not good at that bit.’

  She is constantly baking, her house a show place, her children spotless—yours are the ones who sometimes wear grubby t-shirts you’ve flipped inside out, have cereal for dinner and Coca-Cola as a treat. In Susan’s kitchen is a huge notice board in an ornate frame crammed with certificates of achievement and baby photos and colourful kids’ drawings. The occasional certificates your own children get are lost in piles, somewhere, along with school reports and photos and Santa lists and they will all be sorted, sometime. Long ago, you were in control of your career, your friends, your life; you never feel in control within motherhood. The guilt at so much.

  The time you folded up the push chair and placed it in the boot, only to hear a squeak—baby Pip still in it.

  The time Jack rolled off the bed as you were changing his nappy and ended up with a dint in his skull.

  The birthday cakes from Tesco, year after year.

  The computer games that keep them all riveted, baby included.

  The occasional McDonald’s, three quarters of an hour’s drive away on a Sunday night.

  Basti, of course, has never had it in his life. He tells you this when he comes to your house. He has inherited his mother’s heightened sense of censorious rightness, about everything in his life, and you fear for what’s ahead of him, how the wider world will chip away at that. Meanwhile Susan bustles about in her flurry of energy, a tiny, dark sparrow of efficiency with an enormous, puffed chest, making you feel deficient in response, that you’re always running and never quite catching up. Have had no role model in life for this. The best mothers are those who had bad mothers, you think, because they know what not to do—but what if you never had a mother? If she died before she was lodged in memory.

  Susan’s voice veers you back.

  ‘Wasn’t that homework hard today? Basti got it, eventually.’

  ‘Rexi took a while. I had to snap off the TV just to get him to the table … ’

  ‘We don’t miss ours. The kids never ask for it.’

  A pause. ‘Lucky you.’

  Television, of course, is babysitting for you, your guilty secret. And you didn’t notice exactly what Rexi was doing in his maths book.

  ‘Just checking you’re still on for Basti this Thursday?’

  You’re always scrupulously generous with play dates; it’s why the routine works.

  ‘Of course … can’t wait.’

  ‘Did you get the notice about nits? I know you never check their schoolbags, just reminding you. Basti’s never had them. I don’t know who it is … ’

  You shut your eyes, your knuckles little snow-capped mountains around the phone. Because of bath time, several hours earlier—all the boys, even Pip—and dragging out the lice with all their tiny, frantic legs. And Jack has a pathological aversion to nits, almost vomits with the horror of them, yells like you’re scalping him. Then the pleas, the threats, to finish the homework due tomorrow, to stop the Wii, get to bed. Rexi storming off in frustration, his arms over his head. You feel, sometimes, he’s a great open wound that you’re pouring your love and puzzlement into. What’s going on in there? Does it ever even out? He’s only nine. His teacher says it’s something to do with boys about this age, from seven onwards, their teeth coming through; there’s a huge psychological change in them, hormones swirling. Does he mellow with age, does he strengthen? Is he too much like you, too emotional? You are fascinated and fearful at the depth of his feelings.

  You are not responsible for your child’s happiness, Rexi’s teacher in her fifties told you gently the other day.

  ‘All you’re responsible for is what is said and done to them, as a parent. That’s all. Nothing else.’ You must remember that.

  Lesson 14

  Herein the patient must minister to herself

  Nine-thirty. You step outside. Lock the door.

  Now you are in control. You inhale a breath of steely night air; the cold never ceases to shock in this place, after all these years, still. The children are all asleep, you know they will not wake, know them well enough. You stood in the quietness of their rooms and breathed them in deep and felt a vast peace flood through you, whispering a soothing through your veins. Everyone down, your day done.

  But now.

  Walking fast through a stillness that is holding its breath. Feeling an old you coming back. The stone walls, the close woods, the bridge over the stream are all coated in a thick frost that has not broken for several days and it is ravishingly beautiful, all of it, but it will never hold your heart. Because it is not home.

  It is flinchingly cold, you are not dressed for it, have not thought, just needed to walk, get away, out. Hugh has a work dinner, he’ll be home in a couple of hours, you’ll be back for him, of course. It is suddenly overwhelming you as you walk, the tears are coming now. You dream of being unlocked. By spareness. Simplicity. Light, screaming hurting light. Dream of tall skies, endless space, of being nourished within the sunlight, of never coming back. The tears are streaming now, great gulps, your mouth is webbed by wet. You are not strong here.

  You are on the road now, not properly dressed, cannot go back, cannot face any of it. A car flashes by, swerves, beeps in annoyance. There are no footpaths, only grass verges, the lanes are too narrow, built for carts centuries ago, you shouldn’t be walking in this place. You freeze in terror like a rabbit, can’t go forward, can’t go back. You hold your arms around you and weep, and weep, vined by circumstance—you are no longer you. Lost.

  Lesson 15

  We are able to pass out of our own small daily sphere

  More headlights. A van.

  Slowing, stopping. You shiver, your heart beats fast.

  ‘Hello, stranger.’

  It is Mel. Another school mum. The one who is different, who never quite belongs. Who breezes in and out of the school like she couldn’t care less, who is … unbound. Who says fuck the quiz night, fuck the summer party, fuck the lot of it: I’ve got better things to do with my life. What, God knows.

  She wears real, cool, vintage fur: I don’t d
o fake anything—coats, fingernails, orgasms.

  Everyone suspects she’s been given the school fees for free, the charitable slot. She’s a single mum with a son in Jack’s class. You envy the every-second-weekend-off-from-motherhood that she gets—to sleep in, stay in bed all day, go dancing, potter, drink; to do nothing and everything for once. She runs an antique shop on the High Street—erratic opening hours, bric-a-brac from French flea markets—things you love that Hugh bats away as junk.

  Mel picked up her boy, Otis, from a play date once, late. She’d come straight from her pole-dancing class and until that moment you’d had no idea such a thing existed in this place. Mel would have been the girl who wore her school skirt too short and had her dad’s ciggies in her pocket and smuggled dope into the dormitory; it’s all in her face. Appetite and passion and life’s hard knocks and a big open heart no matter how many times she’s pounded upon the rocks. An aura of a woman who revels in life. Who has sex a lot.

  Mel always lingers after the boys’ occasional play dates. There’s often been some strange pull, in the silence, you don’t know why; you just want to lean across, it’s ridiculous, she’s not your type, your style. She wears skinny jeans, sometimes Uggs; your palette is the colour of reticence, careful camel or sand or chalk with a dash of black. She’s a woman for God’s sake.

  Lesson 16

  She hath done what she could

  ‘Hey,’ Mel says soft, frowning, with infinite understanding. ‘Get in.’

  You gulp your tears; the car is warm, the heating on.

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong—’ you rush out, your voice veering high, off course.

  ‘Sssh … ’

  ‘The boys, the school gate, Hugh—’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  Mel has pulled over, down a lane, she is not taking you back, thank God she is not taking you back. You barely register what she is doing: she is listening, that’s all, she wants to know. Her hand is on your knee, just that.

  ‘Sssh,’ and now the tears are coming again, soft, in the stillness, the quiet; cracked by kindness. You begin to talk, in a way you haven’t for so long.

  ‘But you’re so lucky.’ Quiet, at the end of it. ‘Don’t you see that? You have so much.’

  You look at her. Yes, you nod, yes, you know; yet it has all, bafflingly, come to this.

  Mel leans across, holds your chin, and says your name, softly, gently. You smile; no one has spoken to you like that for so long, a cadence of … caring. She kisses you on the cheek, softly, affectionately, in comfort.

  It strays.

  The tenderness of it, you pull back—but the tenderness, it holds you, draws you.

  Something is coming alive within you, after so long, so many years. You go to speak. ‘Sssh,’ Mel soothes, kissing you, kissing you. There is a stirring, like an anemone swaying into life under the water’s caress; your belly is flipping and you remember long ago, the surrendering, opening out, when you had never felt more alive … once, long ago, for six transforming weeks, another place, life. Something long dormant is awakening within you.

  Lesson 17

  If we do not advance, we retrograde

  What you learn, in that tiny lane, in that van, in the darkness seared with light: that feeling, memory, sensation, vividness, can come flooding back. All it takes is the tenderness in a touch. After so long.

  You pull away at the shock. Mel laughs softly.

  ‘You know, sleeping with a woman can be like discovering sex all over again’—a fingertip slips gently down your cheek, your neck—‘because we know what works’—the finger teases—‘and where.’

  You pause. So vulnerable now to touch, kindness, attention of any sort. You shake your head, reach for the door handle, breathe your thanks—the kids, you have to get back. You stumble out.

  ‘See you at the quiz night.’ Mel smiles a secret smile, starting the van. ‘Or maybe not.’

  Striding back, wondrous, tall, through the glittering alive achingly beautiful frost.

  Like discovering sex all over again …

  It has been so long. So many years, lives, places ago. So many harangued nights of sleeplessness and collapsings into beds without even saying good night to your husband because you’re too tired and too annoyed by some minor irritation like his flossing and his pyjamas pulled up high and his noisy blowing of his nose and anyway he’s already on the way to falling asleep on the couch, in front of the telly, because that is what he always does now, in the shrouded rhythm of your married life.

  Lesson 18

  Upon which he kisses his little wife, and grows mild

  Hugh is home just after 10 p.m., just as he said.

  ‘He won’t notice, he won’t notice,’ you say to yourself, at the kitchen table, a glass of wine before you.

  ‘Hiya,’ he yells.

  He does not come to you, he never does. Now he is throwing down his keys, his wallet, his change. Now he is removing his coat and tie, littering them around the lounge room, balustrades, bedroom; black crows you call them, black crows roosting all over your life.

  ‘Hiya,’ he calls again, enquiringly.

  ‘Hi.’

  He does not come to you, he does not see you. At the kitchen table, sitting there, cracked. Like you were once, long ago; that he has never witnessed, that he would not understand.

  A woman, now, your mind is churning with it, the one thing you never tried.

  But everything else …

  ‘Thank God that pile of clothes has finally disappeared,’ Hugh yells from the bedroom.

  You shut your eyes and throw your head back and smile.

  Blazing light, blazing life.

  II

  ‘My words roar, and my salvation is afar’

  Psalm 22

  Lesson 19

  Truly, in this hard world, we should be accustomed to this law of love—love paramount and never ceasing

  You are eleven. It is your birthday. He takes you out to dinner. He tells you he has a surprise. You wonder what: a horse of your own perhaps, a trail bike. Your father takes you to a restaurant in town, you have never been to one like it, it has cloth napkins and waiters in uniform. Your father doesn’t belong in this place. He has a face like a fist—fleshy, knobbly, rough.

  There is a woman at your table. She is called Anne. Your father tells you they are getting married. As he speaks it is a father you have never seen before. His soft, surrendering eyes that look at her and not you; his glow.

  Your world stops.

  Your father tells you you will be a bridesmaid, with a beautiful dress. Anne will help you choose it. Your father tells you there will be proper food, finally, in your home, fresh sheets and a stocked fridge and even—wait for it—an ironed school uniform every Sunday night. The only concession either of you has ever made to the classroom is him brushing your long hair—his hand gently and firmly holding your crown so as not to hurt—at the start of every school week.

  You take a deep breath. You nod. Your life, until this point, has been unfettered. You have been marinated by the bush that surrounds you. You are often barefoot, grubby and wild, answerable to no one; your father and yourself a tight buddy-unit. You have soil packed under your fingernails in tiny crescent moons and coal dust ingrained in fine lines along your knees and no one ever worries about that. You cannot do blanket stitch, crochet or knit, but you can change a tyre and suck poison out of a snake bite and shrivel a leech on your skin with salt.

  This has been your world, since your mother died of breast cancer when you were a young child.

  But now. A new life. Your father’s sparkling eyes and the pretty, mascaraed eyes of the woman opposite. Their shine. And in between them, an aching enormous eleven-year-old heart churning with fear and excitement, and readiness. Because there is so much love in you. To pour out, to swamp, to receive.

  Dad loves Anne. So you love Anne. So Anne loves you.

  It is as simple as that. Isn’t it?

  Lesson 20
/>   Utterly ignorant of the framework on which society moves, she is perpetually straining at gnats and swallowing camels, both in manners and morals

  You are eleven, you feel too much. You are an open wound that can only be sutured by that simplest of balms: attention. Love as a necessary verb—to rescue, plume, bloom, cradle, encircle, uplift. Protect.

  Beyond your father’s flinty, sloppy love there is no rescue in your world. It is a surprise of four little houses huddled amid a great loom of trees. A scrap of a hamlet that barely deserves a name, too small for its own postcode, with just a mine manager’s house, an under manager’s, an electrical engineer’s and a mechanical engineer’s. All servicing a tiny seam of coal called Beddington Number Two, a tiny pebble of a mine in a valley north of Sydney.

  On the high hills of this place you feel as if you are standing on the roof of the world, that you could reach up and touch the very cheek of God—the breeze slippery with sun and the great expanse of sky unspooling above you and around you to the very corners of the earth but it is only the ground, of course, that is valued in this place. This glorious land on the roof of the world is scurried by towers and conveyor belts and trucks heaped high with their sooty spilling black, and wire fences keeping everyone but miners out. Above ground: the domain of the dispossessed. Convict ghosts, sandstone ruins, abandoned plots, Aboriginal paintings in under-hangings, families sickened by generations of coal dust. Below ground: energy, productivity, work. There is the smell of greed to extract in the very air of this place.