by Lucy Ellmann
‘WHAT?’
‘I’M COLLECTING MONEY FOR THE KINGSTON BAGPUIZE/STOKE POGES ANNUAL RUGBY TEAM BENEFIT.’
‘WHAT???’
‘Aw, fuck you.’ Turns to go.
‘FUCK YOU TOO, and FUCK THE KINGSTON BAGPUIZE/STOKE POGES ANNUAL RUGBY TEAM BENEFIT!’
I was getting ready to tell Jeremy that I didn’t want to live with him anymore. I kept up the extremely-cold-shoulder routine for a full week, and had almost reached a plausible explosion point, when Jeremy lost a contact lens. Blind without them. I had to stay with him until he got a new pair. But by then I had struck up a certain momentum, and couldn’t quite last out the period compassion called for.
‘What do you think is in it for me?’ I asked one night, when the subject seemed to me to have arisen. ‘All I get out of this relationship is direct access to guilt, martyrdom and low self-esteem. Our neighbors think I’m some kind of prisoner in here!’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Jeremy, not quite grasping it. ‘I contribute to the bills! It’s not easy for me, you know, the fact that you own our house. And you’re so bloody self-righteous about it too. Fran’s right: you’re such a goody-goody, you know that? The only thing I feel I have any claim to around here is the fucking washing-machine!’
‘Take your fucking washing-machine.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that!’
‘Don’t you dare pull me like that!’
He let go of my wrist and I went over to our bed to get Lily, who’d fallen asleep with a fever. Jeremy tried to pull her away from me, and accidentally bumped her head, making her cry. I pulled her to me, suddenly determined, and ran out of the room. Jeremy grabbed the sleeve of my nightgown, which tore. Sure that my end was nigh if I remained in the house, I ran down the stairs and out the front door and stood outside in the middle of Shoreditch in bare feet and a damaged nightgown holding a one-and-a-half-year-old whose feet were also bare, and thought how only Masaccio could paint the bare bottom of a baby with the right degree of tenderness. It was five in the morning.
lenses. Jeremy explained things to me for an hour or so, while I mistaken assumption that we’d both calmed down. He said he was sorry, he wasn’t himself because of his lack of contact lenses. Jeremy explained things to me for an hour or so, while I nursed Lily back to sleep, and then he and I went to bed too. As soon as his breathing seemed reliably slumbrous, I got up, packed some things, wrote a cowardly note about the benefits to us both of a short separation, and bundled the sleeping Lily into the car.
We headed west, which in America would take a week, and in Britain can be accomplished in three hours. By ten in the morning, Lily was riding on a Kiddy-Bounce Rocket at Tintern Abbey, which was a disappointment to us both. We proceeded to the Black Mountains. The Welsh seemed all agreed on keeping their reputation as a melancholy race, and I rather appreciated this. A lot ended up in Patagonia, I gather.
Wine, A Record-Player, and Lily
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It was messy, it was childish, it was unkind. Finally I’d dared to go, and it was a great relief.
Daddy said he quite understood my leaving Jeremy, and sent me the money to rent a flat in Pimlico until Jeremy found himself somewhere else to live.
Jeremy visited the newly created one-parent family almost daily, spending more time with Lily than he ever had before. I acquired a succession of child-minders with varying abilities, and considered my thesis officially resumed:
In his ‘Fountain’, Duchamp’s personal contributions were heavily disguised. He signed the object (a urinal) with the name, R. Mutt, after selecting it according to his usual procedure – ‘the choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference, with a total absence of good or bad taste, in fact a complete anaesthesia.’
Wine, a record-player, Lily, and the proximity of delicatessens helped, as Franny’s cast-offs started turning up, unaware that I had secretly vowed never to take on another of them. There was Mick, who claimed to be considering the purchase of my car, which I could no longer afford. I invited him over in friendly if self-seeking fashion. He brought Pouilly Fumé, of which he was rather proud; I didn’t like it. After supper, we watched Newsnight. I tried to ignore my gloomy, drooping companion, who still mooned over Franny. I thought instead of what I was going to do after he’d left: drink some (other) wine, smoke another joint, maybe have some more of the surprisingly delicious crumble I’d made, which Mick had already eaten most of. A little time to myself before going to bed. Mick roused himself to ask: ‘Suzy, do you think I could stay the night? Do you mind?’
‘No. No, that’s fine. I’ve got some spare sheets.’
I knew it. I’d been waiting for this all evening. His pathetic ploy for getting into a position to make some sort of pass. Impervious to a hint.
That decided, Mick promptly fell asleep on the chaise-longue. I had to wake him up when I brought him the sheets and blankets. He then asked if I had an extra alarm clock. I said I’d give him mine, which I claimed not to need. He followed me down the hall, where I quickly flicked on the bright white light-bulb which hung unromantically on a cable. He followed me right into my room, where Lily was sleeping. I got tense. Presumably the pass was due at any moment. I hoped Lily’s presence, or the messiness of the room, might put him off, depending on which type of squeamishness he cultivated.
I stooped to get the clock and righted myself as swiftly as possible. I then hurried past him into the harsh light of the hall. He started talking about something, while moving towards the other room, before he realized I wasn’t coming too. I’d retreated to the door of my bedroom again. He finally got the message and said goodnight. I slept stiffly, full of the triumph of deflecting one of the approved consorts – though I was not convinced that this had been achieved until I heard him lugging his bicycle out of the entrance hall the next morning.
Mick was in bed and asleep within seconds. He woke the next morning refreshed, and pleased that he had stayed at Suzy’s place, which almost halved his journey to work. He left as soon as he was dressed, so as to avoid having to make any more conversation with Suzy. She’d become very dull lately. Probably from smoking so much dope. That Jeremy had been a very good influence. Good cook too. Poor Suzy. What a weird apple crumble that was! He wasn’t going to take that leaky car either, even for £50.
Another guy thought that intimate disclosures about Franny’s sexual idiosyncrasies would be enticing. He took me out for an Italian meal and told me it had once taken him 120 thrusts to make Franny come. I drank a lot of wine and got sloshed enough to have to go straight home, alone, to bed.
There is thus a double deprivation for the spectator: not only is the urinal’s aesthetic value in question, but its ability to function as plumbing is not to be relied on either. The artist (our Mutt), like most plumbers, is nowhere to be found when you need him.
The Struggle
I ordered about twenty books and returned to G.12. Somebody was sitting in my seat. I informed him of the fact that my twenty books would gradually be arriving in front of him. He said he would pass them over the aisle to me, and proceeded to do so, giggling about it every time. Why didn’t he just move? ‘Artist stands back from product’, I wrote half-heartedly on a note-pad.
‘Hello, Suze,’ said a slightly foreign voice over my shoulder. I looked up, and there was Johan Dirks, with whom I had
Jeopardized my Relationship with Jeremy once or twice in 1982, until it had occurred to me to tell Johan that I didn’t want to Jeopardize my Relationship with Jeremy. It occurred to me now that Johan was not strictly off limits, having merely hankered after Franny, but not gone out with her. He was also physically unlike Jeremy – large and heavy. He’d written a Ph.D. in Leipzig on the sense of scale in art, and he suddenly suited mine.
He had me over for Macaroni and Cheese, laboriously created. We discussed going to bed together: Johan thought we should, since we’d done so in the past – I thought we shouldn’t, for the same reason. The best solution in the end seemed to be to run my hand up Johan’s leg. He immediately proposed we go to the bedroom, take off all our clothes, and get into bed. This we did. We couldn’t fuck, since neither of us had any contraception, we agreed. But as soon as this was settled, Johan began to seem a highly fuckable object to me, an antidote to Jeremy before me in the flesh – his erection was pleasingly relentless, as erections go.
Afterwards, I felt embarrassed to have felt so passionate towards him. Irritated too at the prospect of the Morning-After Pill but all I needed at this stage in my life was a baby sired by Johan Dirks. He didn’t really like sex, or women. Retreating into babyhood, he farted a lot and sucked my nipples until, much to his dismay, milk came out of them – he’d thought he was the only one emitting things. Just the fact that I was alive seemed to keep shocking him: not feminine of me. And all I wanted was some nice straight-forward impersonal fucking – why all these kisses, farts, shocks?
I struggled to extricate myself from his flat without too long an aftermath. Just getting an aftermath established took some doing. He had idyllic plans for us: I should stay in bed while he got the sorbet or, if I must, I could get up but only put on a bathrobe. I took the easier course and stayed in bed. He returned with two tiny plastic containers of sorbet. Feigning a decent amount of post-coital tenderness, I let him share mine when he’d finished his.
When at last I sank with relief into my car, I regretted having wanted him, having fucked a guy who made me feel embarrassed about sex. And began to want him again. In fact, my impatience to see Johan Dirks grew and festered, bubbled and spat, all week, until I finally had to inform him that I was impatient. This of course perturbed him. He delayed meeting me. By the time we did converge, I had cooled down. He then accused me of having led him on, in fact of causing his nervous breakdown in 1982 with the same sort of behavior. After these preliminaries, and despite my continuing coldness, he tried to embrace me all evening, 1) because he fancied me and couldn’t help it, and 2) because my refusals in the past had merely been a prelude to passionate hanky-panky. I struggle to get Lily to the Primrose Hill playground: a special treat. First Lily takes off her shoes, so I unfold the pushchair and she re-enters it briefly. Then she agrees to put her shoes back on and we run around trees, kicking autumn leaves for a bit. Lily tries to seem cheerful. We run through leaves.
We reach the playground. Lily is duly swung. I look around and see that the world is grim. A three-legged Alsatian stands to attention outside the play area, and I’m just starting to wonder about the cause of its amputation when a red-faced man with a broken arm starts trying to get his little boy into a swing. I help them.
All the mothers are sitting together, either too cheery or too glum as they repeat to each other the phrase, ‘There’s never enough time in the day.’ My eyes fall on an old woman sitting on a bench, with a white bandage on her nose.
I sat on a wall in the sun, discreetly eating Rich Tea Biscuits. Finally the yellow AA van appeared.
‘Do you want to see my card?’ I asked.
‘Rather see the car. Worry about the car first, and the card later, eh? Talk to me! What’s the matter with the old girl?’
‘I think the battery’s dead. My daughter may have left the lights on.’
‘She as pretty as her mum? Okay, turn her over, let’s hear what she’s got to say for herself, eh?’
I turned the key and the car made no sound.
‘Open the bonnet, will you, Love? When did you last have her maintained?’
How I hate the genderization of objects – I could never live in a country where that was going on all the time. Things you put things on are always female, like tables. Chaises-longues.
‘January.’
‘That’s what you say, but the question is, do I believe you?’ He smirked bewilderingly at me through the windscreen.
‘Well, I had to have some work done then to pass the M.O.T.,’ I ventured.
‘Ah, but that doesn’t mean she was serviced, does it? We all need that now and then, don’t we, eh???’ He scrutinized me closely, as if what he really wanted to say was: ‘Honk if you had it last night.’
‘This battery needs some distilled water,’ he commented.
When he finally put the starter clamps on and got the car started, he conceded, ‘Maybe you were right when you said you left the lights on. Are you shy, Love? Nice blond like you?! Just you seem very quiet.’
Of course I’m shy. So what?
‘I’ve had a difficult morning, that’s all,’ I said. Who hasn’t?
‘Oh, what happened? Do you want to talk about it?’ He peered through the open window with both elbows jutting in.
‘Oh, no, I’d rather not think about it, thanks.’
‘Oh well, I’ve had days like that too. But you shouldn’t let it stop you smiling, Love. Don’t like to see a pretty girl like you not smiling.’
I smiled for him.
‘Well, I’m glad I could fix you up, especially as you’ve had such a rotten day. A lot of them are real old hags. I don’t care about them. But I like fixing a car up for a pretty girl like you. You keep smiling now, Pussy-Cat!’
I was free! I drove around for half an hour to revive the battery, and to recover from the AA man. And was it AA policy to ignore the old bangers of old hags?
My little girl wants to wear pink shoes. She has lovely little grooves in baby places and dimples at the knee, and dirty feet. She’s a person, and she wants to wear pink shoes.
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I took Lily to Venice. I thought streets made of water might amuse, and anyway, I wanted to go. My hopes for the trip were raised by the handsome Italian train conductor who gave me the eye while punching my ticket. I left Lily asleep in the compartment with a friendly fellow traveller, and went to the loo. The ticket collector was still hanging around outside, waiting for me. He’d prepared his speech: ‘You’re beautiful.’ I said that he was too. Then he pushed his tongue into my mouth and pushed me hard against the wall of the train in an imagined fuck. Then he pushed me into the loo and pushed me down, unzipped his trousers, and pushed my head down on his prick. I was feeling tired after a night on the train and rather enjoyed this manhandling. He snuck out of the loo first, to protect his job or his reputation. I crept out a minute later after washing my hands for some reason, feeling quite content.
Lily lost her hat in the canal as soon as we got out of the train station, and cried. And once she’d realized they were the main method of transportation, she refused to go on boats. I struggled up and down the steps of the little bridges, with the pushchair which I either hauled or carried. One wheel kept falling off all over Venice, Murano, Burano and Torcello.
We entered no churches, and no museums, until I made a determined effort and got Lily to the Guggenheim collection. A storm broke out as we arrived, and Lily ran around the courtyard in the rain, taking her clothes off. When I scolded her mildly about this, she lay down on the marble floor, condensation rising almost visibly from her towards some Cubist papiers collés, and blocked a doorway. When she finally fell asleep in her pushchair, I wheeled her into Peg
gy Guggenheim’s bedroom and went to the loo for a few moments’ peace. Sixty seconds later, two or three of the bilingual, pre-parental, American Art History-major guards were knocking on the loo door, scared to death that the child had been abandoned to Peggy Guggenheim’s care forever.
I trudged, Lily complained, my money ran low, and meanwhile, the heat and the handsome men continued to make me feel randy. Even the male pigeons I found sexy, stalking females in St Mark’s Square, with their necks all puffed out, though I noted that they were easily swayed from this quest whenever Lily threw them corn. I was approached in restaurants every night by their human equivalent, loose men who were strangely indifferent to my reaction to them – they bounced back or took off, with the same blank expression either way. They all had teddy-bear names, like Nildo, Naldo, Bepe and Pepe.
A restaurant-owner called Mimmo gave Lily some nice noodles and freshly squeezed orange juice, for which I was grateful, since all the other restaurants were shutting. He placed a tiny TV in front of her which she happily watched, undeterred by the language barrier. I relaxed. I rather liked Mimmo – he knew too little English to put me off. We started kissing. It was not bad. At least he showed determination.
He wanted me to come back and see his flat. I explained that this was out of the question with Lily around. He said, just come see it so I would know where it was and could then come to lunch some time. It made no sense to me. But Lily wanted to go, so we went. We saw his raggedy carpet and his unmade bed and the bits of cotton wool on the floor. I had never thought before about the fact that they had cotton wool in Italy too.
He started to straighten it all up a bit. I started to go. I called Lily, but she was sitting down on a little stool in Mimmo’s bedroom, too tired to move. I was heading back to go pick her up, when Mimmo grabbed me and pressed me against the wall, kissing my closed lips. I suddenly realized that he felt he had a right to do anything to me, because I’d had the audacity to go to his flat. When I tried to push at the arms holding me, he pushed harder. I made myself cold and stiff, saying, ‘Stop. Stop it,’ again and again. I wondered how I could explain even to good friends, much less the police, that I hadn’t intended to fuck this person. He suddenly relented – he must have realized it would be quite hard to rape me, and perhaps he even grasped the fact that it would be no fun.
