Singularity

by Charlotte Grimshaw

  She stared.

  ‘An enema,’ he said earnestly. ‘It’s a sort of tube thing, rather thrilling, if you …’

  ‘An enema,’ she repeated.

  He held up his hands, alarmed. ‘Look here, it’s just a bit of fun. Quite safe. You do it to one another. Or whatever combination you like really. I just thought you might be interested.’

  ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘No no. Just a bit of fun. When I was at school …’

  She slammed the door, leaving him bobbing and waving his hands and mouthing through the glass. After a moment the car started, the gears clashed and the car jerked quickly away from the curb. She watched him drive into the dark heart of the Domain, until only the brake lights on the back of the car were visible, and then he shot round a bend under the canopy of trees and was gone.

  It was two o’clock in the morning. Viola lay in bed and reviewed the evening. Dinner with Grant, during which he’d been tired and distracted after a bad week. The party: everyone remote and glamorous and uninterested in her. Grant pulling his arm away and flirting. (Was he flirting? Yes, he definitely was.) The walk in the rain, finishing with a ride home in an ancient car and the strangest invitation she had ever received.

  Why had she got in the car with a strange man? She could have been murdered. Maybe that was what she’d wanted. To be carried away, horribly beaten, found dead somewhere. Instead he had come out with that bizarre suggestion. She let out a short, appalled laugh. It was idiotic of her to get in the car. She’d got what she deserved.

  She turned on the light and sat down at her desk. She opened her diary.

  Chapter two, she wrote.

  When Dr Simon Lampton saw Viola Myers in the street for

  the first time in two years, he couldn’t help himself. He gave

  her such a foul look that his whole face contorted.

  She made herself a cup of tea and got into bed. She went into a deep sleep. Later she dreamed that she had stopped breathing. She needed to draw breath but couldn’t make herself. She struggled. She was on a spiral staircase, in darkness. The steps went down and down and there was no end. She thought, no, this is one of those dreams that just goes on and gets worse, I’m not having it, and felt herself bursting out of it with huge effort. She woke up.

  There was someone in the room.

  She said, ‘Kate?’

  A man’s voice said something. She sat up, clenching her fists, still with fright.

  ‘Your French doors were unlocked,’ Grant said. He sat down heavily on the bed.

  She remembered. She had left the party without telling him.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  She couldn’t tell whether he was angry or drunk, or just tired.

  ‘I thought you must have gone off with someone,’ he said. His tone was joking, no real feeling in it.

  ‘No.’ She tried to think what was best to say. ‘I felt bad. Sick.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Sorry.’ She thought of saying, You were flirting. I didn’t think you’d care.

  He lay down next to her. He started to stroke her arms and back. She wanted to push him away, but she was responding to his touch.

  When he was lying lightly on top of her he said, ‘Do you like that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Say it. Say you love it.’

  He whispered this sometimes. Say it. Say you love me fucking you. In the right mood she could go along with it; she could put herself in a kind of trance where saying it didn’t seem like obedience, like being made to do something that wasn’t natural to her, and in that mood it could excite her too. I love you fucking me. Wantonness. Lust. But now she couldn’t put herself in the right frame of mind.

  Say it.

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Grant,’ she said in a normal voice. He paused, then carried on.

  He rolled off her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right.’

  They lay in the dark. She sat up suddenly and said, ‘I forgot to take my pill.’

  Grant had his arm over his eyes. He said, ‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’

  Viola lay still. A small alarm started inside her head.

  She raised herself on her elbow. ‘What do you mean?’

  He didn’t answer.

  She said, holding herself steady, ‘Do you mean I don’t need to worry?’

  ‘Can we go to sleep? I’m tired.’ His tone was flat. Cold. Dismissive.

  I wouldn’t worry about it.

  Viola said, ‘You meant I don’t need to worry. Have you had yourself …’ she couldn’t think of the word. ‘Have you had, what do they call it? The snip?’

  He rolled over, his tone suddenly sharp, engaged. ‘What does this mean? That you want a baby?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you want one let’s make one. Come on. Let’s go again. You want a kid? Come on then.’

  Viola felt cold all over. He was taunting her.

  ‘Say it. You do want a baby.’

  There was something boyish and loose and vicious in his voice, as if he was thrilled to be entering a place they had always steered carefully around. Was he punishing her for her pretending, her coyness? Throwing it in her face?

  She made herself say, ‘No, I don’t want a baby.’

  She thought, what if he’d had a vasectomy? (Could you tell? She had no idea.) ‘I want you to tell me exactly what you meant,’ she said.

  But he’d slipped into a kind of refrain, almost crowing, as if he was finally enormously sick of something that had lain between them.

  ‘Come on then, if you want one.’

  They lay in the dark, taken over, engulfed by this sudden scalding bitterness between them.

  Say it. Say it.

  Simon Lampton got through the week. Nothing happened. Another uneventful week passed. But Viola was constantly in the back of his mind; a kind of tension had spun itself around him, as if the barometer had dropped and the air was radiantly still, holding itself in check before a storm.

  One cool sunny morning, the sky high and hard and clear over the city, he tramped across the Domain, went into his office and began to go through his files. Clarice appeared, arms folded across her chest, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘Guess who rang this morning.’

  There was a pause. Looking down he said, ‘Who?’

  ‘That hopeless Viola Myers. Remember her? I said I doubted you’d be able to ring her back.’

  ‘Really?’ A small tension headache throbbed in his temple, as if he’d been stabbed with a pin.

  ‘She can’t be looking for a job. Honestly. What a dimwit. Everything she touched ended up in the wrong place.’

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘She’s left a number. Shall I chuck it in the bin?’

  ‘No. Better not.’

  Clarice left the bit of paper on his desk and went out, shaking her head.

  His first thought was to ring Karen. He stopped himself. Reading Viola’s story, what he and Karen had both felt was hurt. They had done their best to help her, and she had revealed herself to be sinister, ambiguous, nasty. He would protect Karen this time. He would deal with Viola himself.

  He got up and stood at the window, nervously clicking his pen. He thought of not doing anything. But that wouldn’t be any good. She might persist, come to his rooms, ring the house. (If Karen answered there would be fireworks.) Best to find out what she was up to.

  He rang the number and got the reception at the museum. He asked for Viola.

  She said, ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Simon Lampton.’

  ‘Oh. You called.’ She laughed, flustered, pleased. He felt a secret fascist rise in himself, saw himself slamming a heavy cell door in her face. He remembered the old sense of her: frivolousness, self-indulgence, vulnerability, her notion that she could just waft into someone else’s life and they would welcome her.

  She said, ‘I work just across the park from
you. At the museum.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘I’ve got something to ask you.’ She lowered her voice. ‘About that incident with your father.’

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘No, it’s too complicated.’ Again that silly, nervous laugh. ‘Couldn’t we meet, just quickly, in the park this lunchtime?’

  Meet in the park.

  ‘I suppose I could do that, if it’s important,’ he said.

  ‘It is, it is. Could we?’ She sounded thrilled.

  ‘How about one o’clock, at the garden for the blind?’ he said. He looked at his reflection in the window. His expression was gruesome.

  ‘Okay. Great. Bye.’

  At one o’clock he went to the garden and sat on a park bench, watching the mynah birds hopping and squabbling on the concrete. The sound of balls thwacking on rackets came from the tennis club. The air was still, the sky bright and pale, with a milky sheen of light around the sun. The palm tree cast short spiky shadows.

  She was late. He detested lateness. He felt his anger rising and steeled himself; he must be calm and controlled, assess her like pain, as if from a long way off. Deal with her and be done with it.

  He saw her coming down the hill from the museum, taking a circuitous route, as if she was nerving herself up. At one point she veered right away, heading towards the soccer fields. He stood up, prepared to march after her and grab her by the arm if necessary. He wanted this over with. He wasn’t going to be driven mad by a whole series of melodramatic near misses and failures of nerve. But she turned back and came down the hill. She was dressed in a black dress, sunglasses and sandals. Her sandy hair was pulled up tight, away from her face.

  Simon faced her. She saw him, drew back, laughed nervously and said, ‘Hi.’ Her upper lip quivered. ‘Shall we sit down here?’

  Simon sat on the edge of the seat and stared at the fronds of the palm tree. She sat next to him, playing with her fingers. They both turned and began to speak and lapsed into embarrassed silence. Simon found his mood strangely heightened; he felt more angry and harassed now than he had felt before. He thought of Karen. That nasty description of her. He swallowed.

  She said in her breathy, slightly sugary voice, ‘I’m sorry to bother you. I’ve never tried to talk to you since that night. I want you to know I’ve never told anyone about it.’

  She pressed her small fist against her heart: high-minded, self-sacrificing.

  Still he didn’t say anything, not trusting his voice.

  ‘But I saw you the other day and you gave me such a terrible look …’ She tittered.

  Simon pressed his fingers to his forehead.

  She ran on, ‘And when I saw that look you gave me I got an idea. The thing is, last year I wrote a story based on the incident with your father. I did a creative writing course and I’ve been trying to write a novel, but the story’s as far as I’ve got. It won third prize.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said as coldly as he could.

  ‘Thanks.’ She turned to him, beaming. He edged further away.

  She went on, ‘When you gave me that look I thought you must have read the story and that it had made you angry. Had you? Did it?’ she asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  She rushed on, ‘I just wanted to tell you that I put a sort of spin in the story that’s not the truth. It’s something I made up, the whole thing, about the student being sly and dodgy and the young man being the way he is, cold and rich, and the father being this poor simple musician. I made it all up. It’s just fiction. It’s not how it was. Really, I was just stupid and got myself into a bit of trouble and you helped me. You see?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I think I do.’

  ‘Yes?’ She leaned towards him. ‘Do you mean you’re not annoyed?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ he said.

  She clasped her hands in her lap and bent forward, her feet pigeon-toed, like a four-year-old waiting for a present. ‘Does this mean it’s okay?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She turned to him and put her hand out, as if to touch his arm. He drew back.

  She said, ‘So there’s nothing to stop us talking like friends.’

  Friends. She was out of her mind.

  ‘Friends,’ he repeated. He looked at her. She understood. Her smile dropped. Her mouth went lopsided, quivered. She gave a little squeak and put her face in her hands. There was a silence.

  She made a muffled, sniffing sound.

  Simon took a breath. He allowed the silence to lengthen. A couple strolled past with a child in a pushchair, a Labrador panting and lumbering behind.

  Viola’s shoulders were hunched. With his fists on his knees he swivelled towards her.

  ‘Thank you for your concern, Viola.’

  She looked at the dog and sniff ed bleakly.

  He went on, ‘The truth is, I haven’t read the story you’re talking about. I did see you recently, but if I looked out of sorts, it was nothing to do with you.’

  She turned sideways, looking at him from behind her hand with one damp, sceptical eye. He straightened up. The oppressed feeling had lifted, as if, in one sudden arc of electricity, power had leapt from her to him.

  ‘As far as your writing goes, you can make up whatever stories you like. I won’t be offended at all. How could I be?’

  She turned sideways again. Yes, there was wetness, tears escaping under her fingers, blurring the dark make-up. She snatched a handkerchief out of her bag.

  ‘Indeed,’ he added loftily, ‘writing can be a form of therapy.’

  There was a pause as this hung in the air. He felt an evil little laugh rise in himself. Was that over-egging it a bit?

  ‘I’m not mad,’ she said, with a sullen flounce.

  ‘No, of course not.’ He looked down at her black handbag. It was stylish but cheap, as were her dress and shoes. She was pretty. She would know how to make herself look very good if she had the money. He looked at her flimsy shoes. He had an odd sense: sympathy, pity. And then something not altogether different from pity, but worse. Was there a point where pity and cruelty came close, where you couldn’t tell which you were feeling?

  ‘What do you do up there?’ He pointed up the hill at the museum.

  ‘I’m just an assistant. I haven’t got a degree or anything.’

  ‘No.’ He nodded, as if to say, of course not. She shot him a startled glance.

  ‘And are you … married, living with someone?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘No children?’ he pursued.

  ‘No.’ The look she gave him now was one of childish incredulity, as if he were a bully beginning to twist her arm in the playground, slowly ratcheting up the pain.

  ‘No,’ he said again, softly. ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘What do you mean you suppose not?’

  He waved his hand. ‘Oh … And are you at all published?’

  She said, wiping her eyes, smudging them more, ‘No, I’m not published. Except for my story in the paper. Which won a prize. Okay, third prize. I’ve done a creative writing course.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Well. Good luck. Perhaps you’ll get properly published one day.’ He wondered how old she was. Thirty? She had smooth, unlined skin.

  He smacked his hands on his thighs. ‘I have patients waiting.’

  She rose and stood before him, biting her lip and glancing away up the hill. He had the sudden clear perception that she had dressed carefully for this occasion; that she had excitedly planned for it, making up her face, wearing her best, most flattering black dress, perhaps rehearsing her lines. And somehow it had fallen terribly flat, and she stood in the patches of sunlight between the cruel shadows of the palm fronds and regarded him with dumb misery.

  ‘Can I see you again?’ she asked, and then winced and closed her eyes.

  Simon stood over her. He said, hearty, ‘Now that we’ve cleared this up, there’s no need, is there. You get on with your life, which I must say sounds full of terrific p
ossibilities, and I’ll just plod on back to mine.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, nodding, biting her lip, twisting the strap on her bag. ‘Yeah.’

  As he turned away she made a move forward, in the faint hope, perhaps, that he would make some final gesture. He stepped nimbly back.

  ‘I know my story wasn’t any good,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t subtle. I should have done it better.’

  He shrugged. ‘Really.’

  She made a last attempt, twisting the strap in her fingers. ‘I’m trying to explain the difference between journalism and fiction. You’re angry because you think I portrayed you in a bad light and showed myself to be sinister. But that wasn’t anything to do with my real feelings, or the truth. I was just using the detail to make something up. It’s fiction. I could have made you Superman and myself a heroine — that wouldn’t have represented the truth either.’

  He said smoothly, with a hint of iron this time, ‘As I said, you can make up whatever you like. I don’t have much time to read fiction. My wife Karen does. Karen reads quite a lot. Perhaps she read your story.’ He paused, allowed that to vibrate between them.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said.

  ‘But I doubt it,’ he added.

  He said goodbye and went off down the hill.

  Viola walked back to the museum. At the top of the hill she felt she couldn’t go inside just yet, and walked instead around the outside of the building, clenching her fists, stopping to put her hand to her forehead and wince as a fresh wave of embarrassment struck her. It hadn’t gone as she had planned. It had gone badly wrong. When he said writing could be a form of therapy. That was the worst. He was patronising, treating her as mad.

  But he was underestimating her. She wasn’t mad. She’d been trying to explain something serious: the business of writing fiction. She stopped and looked miserably over the harbour. It was a bright fresh day with clouds casting dark blots of shadow over the sea. Towards the islands there were rain showers, patches of silver mesh on the horizon. He’s a doctor, she thought. He doesn’t understand what I was trying to do. He said himself he doesn’t read fiction. Of course not, he has to bury himself in medical texts. His is a different intellectual discipline.