Connie watched mutely as Sara photographed all of these things. Each image took a long while to encapsulate – in the lens, in the black box – before it could be finally recorded.
The banisters, the toilet seat (down), her pillow – still featuring the indentation of her head – her favourite shoes, her hairbrush.
They were in Sara’s bedroom. At long last she broke the silence between them.
“You look tired.”
Connie blinked. “Do I?”
“Yes. Wasn’t your bed comfortable?”
“It was fine. I haven’t been sleeping well. Not since my dad. I got some tablets prescribed for it but I haven’t taken them. I don’t like forcing things.”
“It’s unhealthy not to sleep.”
Connie shrugged.
“Actually…” Sara was concentrating on the camera’s flash mechanism, “would you mind doing something for me?”
Connie nodded. “Anything.”
“Go downstairs, grab a kitchen stool and bring it back up here.”
Connie went and did as she was asked. Sara took the stool and stood it close to the foot of her bed, then placed the camera on top and peered through its lens. She adjusted the stool and looked once more.
“Climb on to the bed, will you?”
Connie climbed on to the bed. Sara stared through the lens at her.
“Right,” she said, “that’s all. You can go now.”
Connie clambered off the bed and tried not to feel pique at being personally excluded from Sara’s burgeoning photographic montage.
“I’m just a shadow,” she thought wryly, yawning, heading downstairs again, feeling the banister smooth and cool and suddenly significant beneath her hand.
♦
“Do you know how it was that I made my money?”
Luke was staring out to sea. He’d wandered down on to the beach to thank Ronny for what he’d believed at the time was saving his life. Now, of course, he knew that Ronny had not saved his life. His life had remained perfectly intact. Ronny had witnessed his pain, that was all.
Even so, he’d fully intended to thank him, but ended up staring out to sea instead and talking about something altogether different.
“I didn’t realize that you had any money,” Ronny said, “I never actually considered it.”
Ronny had three giant piles of shells around him, each of which he was now laboriously placing into three black dustbin liners.
“Dot-to-dot,” Luke said boldly.
Ronny scratched his nose. “What’s that?”
“Dot-to-dot books. That’s how I made my money. Dirty ones. A photograph, only partially revealed, with the rest of the page numbered and dotted so that you can take a pen and fill in the pornographic segment yourself.”
“Really?” Ronny was vaguely incredulous. He’d never heard of such a thing.
“Yes. It wasn’t entirely my idea. I just did the photos. Before that I’d done straight glamour work. Calendars, postcards, but I’d always found it frustrating. My tastes were generally more…eclectic.”
“Eclectic,” Ronny nodded.
“So I made some money on the dot-to-dots. I’ve done three books altogether. All quite successful. But what I couldn’t help noticing – I mean at the time – was that I was basically taking pictures that no one would really get to see. So much of the picture was obscured. It was as though the picture’s only…interest, strength, was in what was actually missing.”
“I like that.”
At last Ronny was fully engaged.
“What?”
“That the thing you are most interested in is the thing no one gets to see.”
“Really?” Luke’s voice was cool. “It’s chilly.”
He rubbed his arms and decided that Ronny was either thoroughly insensitive, purposefully facetious or intensely, no, incredibly stupid.
♦
Connie had worked out that all roads in this part of Sheppey were basically one road, and on this premiss, when her path divided into the route she’d taken the previous afternoon with Lily, to her right, and a rough walkway into what looked like a nature reserve to her left, she took the left-hand path and bargained that ultimately she’d end up exactly where she wanted.
In her arms she held the towel Jim had given her. When she’d taken it down from the line she’d sniffed at it, expecting to discover something. But the towel felt rough and smelled only of synthetic soap. She’d folded it and then kissed it. She often kissed inanimate objects and attached no significance to this practice. It was merely a foible.
In the reserve she saw a heron and a lark – a little brown bird which called so shrilly and then rose and rose up into the sky until it was almost invisible before diving down, dropping, plummeting, like a disappointed heart, a stone, a bullet.
She passed by the hides. She did not venture inside any of them. It was a bare day; huge and flat and empty and blowy and cheek-reddeningly cold. Her nose tingled.
Then she saw it. By chance. The rabbit. Far to her left, on a bushy little hillock. Running, no, chasing. Another rabbit. A brown one. But the first rabbit was jet black. An ink-spot. A small, tight pupil inside the pale green eye of the landscape.
It was so damn obvious! This sable bunny. This oddity. It was its own worst enemy. It was its own bellringer; a walking announcement. A misfit. She stopped and watched as it zipped along the horizon, like the tip of an etch-a-sketch, a nib, a shaving, a harsh jut of dark lead.
How did it survive? She laughed out loud. She didn’t know why. How did it survive? Then she walked on, jauntily, fully secure that she merged in her blue jeans and her grey jumper, with her pale hair, her pale skin, confident, adapted, invisible, disguised.
On the beach Connie saw Ronny and Luke, deep in conversation. She skittered across the highest of the dunes, over and along, until she reached the prefabs. She raised her knuckles and knocked on Jim’s door but the door was not shut, just pulled to, and it swung open under the weight of her fist.
“Oh. Sorry…”
She stood in the doorway. The room was grey, the curtains closed. She saw the tip of Jim’s smooth head protruding over the arm of the sofa. Then it jerked. A hiccup.
“Hello,” she said, very quietly.
Jim sat up. He corkscrewed around. He rubbed at his eyes and then stared at her over the back of the sofa. “What do you want?”
“I brought your towel back.”
He said nothing. Then he hiccupped.
“When was the last time you saw a white horse?”
“What?”
“A white horse.”
Jim hiccupped again.
“My dad used to say it. It’s one of those things you always try when someone has the hiccups.”
“Right.”
“To distract them. If they think about something else then they forget that they have the hiccups and so get rid of them.”
Jim shook his head. “That wouldn’t work for me.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not psychological. It’s a physical thing. My stomach goes into spasms. I can have them for whole days at a time.”
“You should visit a doctor.”
“Yes I should.”
Jim’s voice was brutally dismissive. He hiccupped.
“It must be driving you crazy.”
He hiccupped. Connie grinned. “It’s driving me crazy.”
“So go away.”
Jim sniffed. His nose kept on running.
“I brought you back your towel,” Connie pointed to the towel.
He nodded. He did not think to thank her for returning it. He hiccupped.
“Prison Issue,” she said.
He jerked up. “What?”
“Prison Issue.”
Jim was silent for a while. He stared at her. Eventually he said, “So what’s your problem?”
“My problem?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have a problem.”
Connie continued to
stand in the doorway. There was something about this squib of a man that she found oddly compelling. When she asked herself why this should be, she decided that it was because he was the one thing she could not be interested in. He was not interesting. He was ungenial, self-contained, dull. And he was not Ronny Ronny was sitting on the beach with his lacerated wrists and muck green eyes.
Jim had closed his own eyes for a moment, hoping that when he opened them Connie would be gone. But when he did finally open them she had drawn two steps closer.
“Gone,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“They’ve gone. Your hiccups.”
They had gone. Jim regretted their passing. Connie saw his expression. “You’re missing them.”
“What?”
“Are you deaf?”
“Deaf?”
“Every time I say something you repeat it.”
“I’m tired.”
He was still shivering. He struggled to stop himself.
“Are you ill?”
“No.” He sniffed.
“Can I ask you something?”
Jim’s neck was hurting from staring over the back of the sofa. He turned around again so that he faced away from her. She took this as an invitation to walk around the sofa herself and to stand in front of him. He stared blankly at her grey sweater. The wool. The fibre. He hated wool. Why was that? He shuddered. Always a reason.
She thought he was looking at her breasts and actually didn’t mind.
“I’m in a rather strange situation,” she said, and then cleared her throat. “Uh…” she paused for a moment, “It’s Ronny,” she said, “there’s a kind of…well, connection.”
For a moment Jim inspected Connie with what actually amounted to genuine interest. “You know Ronny?”
“Well, not…kind of.” She nodded. “Actually my father knew him. At least I think he did.”
“Your father?” Jim considered this for a second and then something astonishing struck him. “Don’t tell me you’re his sister?”
“His sister?” Connie scowled. “I didn’t even know he had a sister.”
She thought about this for a moment and then burst out laughing. It was a ridiculous idea. His sister.
“You really think I could be his sister? Is that possible?”
Jim shrugged. He was confused. He stared into her small, bright face and tried to see some trace of Ronny in it. Connie was still reeling. “His sister. God! His half-sister.”
She pushed a cushion and Jim’s blanket aside and sat down on the sofa just along from him. She turned to face him. “So you know Ronny well?”
Jim was trying to work out how he felt. He felt like a cat-owner who’d just discovered that his cat had been adopted as a stray. In short, he was jealous. Bereft. Here was someone to take Ronny away. To steal him. To rescue him. To save him.
“The point is…” Connie drew up her knees, “I saw him yesterday on the beach and there was something…” she looked at Jim, almost apologetically, “missing.”
“His hair,” Jim said quickly, “he cut it off.”
“No.” Connie smiled. “I don’t mean that. I mean…more…” she paused, “and then there’s his wrists. All scarred and everything.”
Jim felt a sudden rush of dislike for this girl. She was a prig. She had no true understanding of anything. He said shortly, “Ronny’s had a difficult time of it. He’s been very unhappy.”
While Jim spoke, though, he realized that he wasn’t actually thinking of Ronny at all, but of himself. He was immediately appalled by this sudden, clean, harsh apprehension of his own self-pity. Was it transparent? He chewed on his lips to stop them from grimacing.
“The point is…” Connie inspected her hands, “my dad died and he left Ronny some money in his will.”
Jim touched his cheek with his left hand, then remembered and snatched his fingers away. Connie watched him, intrigued.
“And in some respects he really looks like he could do with it.”
“No,” Jim shook his head, “I don’t think Ronny’s very bothered about material things.”
He couldn’t breathe properly His nose was running again.
“I know,” Connie nodded at this. She looked very far away one moment and too, too close the next. “Apparently when he was a child he used to break things.”
“Did he?”
Jim struggled to focus.
“Yes…you know…uh…”
Connie was staring at Jim and thinking something inexplicable. “I saw a black rabbit on my way down here today.”
“A black rabbit?”
He tried to swallow. His mouth felt dry.
“Ronny asked me if I’d seen one and I said I hadn’t but then I did see one. It was so strange. It really stood out. You’d think they’d be fair game, really, for all the bigger birds and the farmers.”
Connie’s eyes were prickling. She rubbed them for a second and then found herself yawning. Jim was perspiring. And not just on his face, on his head too, the back of his neck.
“You look terrible, Jim.”
Connie had used his name. Jim glanced over his shoulder, as if someone else was in the room. Jim. Poor Jim. Things had been such a struggle for him. He suddenly felt so sorry for this Jim person. Poor Jim who felt so wretched.
He closed his eyes.
“Could I get you some water or anything?”
Connie stood up. Jim shook his head. He wanted her to go. But she went into the kitchen anyway and found a glass and filled it. When she returned to the living room Jim was curled up on the sofa, half-covered in the blanket, his pillow on the floor.
She picked up the pillow. “Lift your head.”
He opened his eyes and lifted his head. His eyes were full of a kind of fury. He moved automatically. She pushed the pillow under him. It felt damp. She saw that it was marked by grey stains. It was an old pillow.
“You can relax now.”
Jim lowered his head, very slowly. She adjusted his blanket. He remained stiff.
“I’ve put some water on the floor next to the sofa,” Connie said. “Can I do anything else for you?”
“No.”
His voice was hard. His eyes were closed. He was so strange-looking. Like a hedgehog, she told herself, without bristles. He was sweating. His nose was running. She put her hand into her pocket and pulled out a paper tissue. She unfolded it, sat down on the floor, leaned her shoulder against the sofa’s arm, then tentatively reached out to dry his forehead. He did nothing. She dabbed the tissue under his nose. He didn’t move, but his eyes were squeezed up tight, as if he couldn’t bear her touching him.
“I’m an optician,” she said, eventually, like this would give him confidence, like it was something medical, some kind of sister qualification. She thought he was asleep, his breathing was so deep and so rhythmical. She was dazed by it. Stupefied.
But he was not asleep. “I’m colour blind,” he said coldly, without opening his eyes. Colour blind, Connie thought, then her chin touched her breast-bone and she stopped thinking.
∨ Wide Open ∧
Thirty-Three
Her armpit, her nose, her knees, her in-grown toenail.
Her eyes, her nape, her arse, her knuckles.
Her breasts, her stretch-marks, her anus, her clitoris.
And each time the camera clicked she smiled and said to herself: This is me. It’s true. It’s real. I’m here. I’m it.
Her navel, her waist, her moles, her calluses.
Her fillings, her rumblings, her lapses, her laughter.
These things. Her life.
Telling, containing, revealing, relaying.
A click – a flash – a shutter.
Daughter – wife – mother – lover.
Yes.
And the rest.
♦
Ronny staggered back to the prefab carrying the three bags. He supported two with his left hand, and the third he held gnashed between his teeth. It was heavy though- The weigh
t of it snagged his bottom lip and splayed it out, purple-whitely, on to his chin.
It wasn’t much of a distance, but by the time he’d arrived there he was struggling, he was puffed and spent and listing. He placed the bags down, very gently, and then stood in the prefab’s open doorway, silently opening his mouth and stretching his jaw – like a child recovering from his first dental extraction – waggling his chin from left to right so as to return the feeling back to it.
Inside the prefab he saw something he had not expected. Connie, leaning against the sofa, her head tipped forward, her eyes closed. A stiff, blonde flower, its petals folded. And next to her, Jim, waxy pale, corpse-like, his eyes closed too, his breathing laboured.
Ronny paused in the doorway, gaping and smiling, but uneasy, as if faltering at the entrance to a hallowed place, an ancient tomb; somewhere sacred and complete and inaccessible. He took one step backwards, another, then a third, until he was out of the doorway’s grey shade and back bathing in the light outside. He stared up into the bleary sun until he was dizzy, as if he wanted to burn the quiet scene he’d just witnessed clean out of his eyes.
Then he bent over and picked up the three bags. He used both hands. He carried them, blinking away a white-red spot in the centre of his vision, banging them clumsily up against his legs, to the back of the prefab, where he deposited mem in a line along the back wall. He threw himself down next to them. His chest felt so empty but so heavy. He put his hands to his face.
“What’s happening? Who am I?”
He spoke out loud, but not loudly.
He stared at his fingers as if they might tell him. But they didn’t. He pursed his lips. He scowled. He pushed the tip of his tongue against his bottom row of teeth. He blew. He blew. No noise emerged, just a kind of panting. He tried harder. No sound. No sound.
He stopped trying. Instead, he plunged his hands into the closest black bag and pulled out some shells, put them down on to the ground, took off one of his shoes and banged at them with its heel. The shells shattered. He searched out the sharpest fragment, rolled up his trouser leg and applied the shell, forcefully, to his shin.
He made several deep indentations but the cuts didn’t bleed. He became more frantic and slid the shell along his calf. Here the shell sliced wonderfully and the blood flowed freely. Thank God, he muttered. Thank God I’m alive. Thank God, thank God I’m alive. Thank God.
Thames Gateway 01; Wide Open Page 17
