Bloody Women

by Helen FitzGerald

  Joe was holding me. He was saying, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ He was saying, ‘All you did was what we agreed and it’s okay.’ He was saying that we should never have agreed to it and that we must never talk of it, that he was mine and mine alone and he was sorry and he loved me and no matter what I had done, no matter what my mother had done, no matter what his family thought of me, he would marry me in a second if I would have him.

  I would, of course.

  I would have him.

  PART THREE

  30

  You must know by now that I’m mad as a snake. Have been since I was twenty-three, though there were glimpses of it before then. Just like Dad: down, then up, then down big time, then so up it scared everyone to death.

  ‘You are,’ I remembered Anna saying. She had visited me after my first serious episode. I was with Rory at the time. I’d bought and sold too many flats for a normal person, had managed to get a BBC gig, run a marathon or two, I had kicked a television, and told his family they were fuck-faces.

  ‘You’re mad,’ she said. ‘Which is exactly why I love you.’

  She saw it as a positive thing, as a gift of inspiration and energy. It had its price, granted, but it was worth it.

  ‘You feel things more,’ she said. ‘Lucky you.’

  I was never as bad as Dad. I was fine as long as I wasn’t self-medicating with alcohol and drugs and steering clear of people who truly loved me. Mind you, much of Janet’s Edgely’s book had argued, that in her professional opinion as a qualified fuck-face, I was worse, madder and more dangerous.

  ‘But for now, you need to come down for a bit. Okay?’ Anna suggested after the ‘here’s to the cunting revolution’ incident with Rory.

  She helped me through it, took me to a doctor, and got me the lithium I needed to enter ten long years of so-called normality: seven heavily medicated years of tedium with Mani, two as a single girl, then six months with Stewart.

  At the end of this period – at the age of thirty-three – we both felt I might cope without mood stabilisers. They made feel sick and shaky all the time, and I was fed up with having to go for regular kidney checks at the medical centre. She watched over me as I embarked on a drug-free period.

  ‘Don’t be afraid of your feelings,’ she said. ‘We can cope with them.’

  ‘Jitters are normal,’ she said when I panicked before the wedding. ‘Just go with them. Enjoy them! Don’t over-analyse.’

  I was put straight back on them in prison, of course, but they failed to make me stop wanting to harm myself, which was my greatest fear, I think – that I would hurt people the way Dad had hurt me and Mum.

  Almost as soon as I got out again, I went off them, desperate to feel something, to be freed from the emotional prison as well as the physical one.

  Joe had known about my condition since our second date. He responded by kissing me and telling me he’d like to be my very own personal physician.

  To my surprise, when he found me in the hotel in Lucca, he repeated the offer.

  ‘Will you marry me, Cat? Will you stay here with me and let me look after you?’

  With vodka and Ryanair hotdog bile dribbling down my chin, I made two conditions: we would wait six months, and we would never have sex with anyone else as long as we both lived.

  We hugged for a long time in the hotel room, then Joe cleaned me up and rehydrated me.

  Joe started the car and headed to the hills. I remember Joe’s hand was on my leg, the windscreen was fogged and difficult to see through, the Devil’s Bridge was murky in the foreground. I was sleepy . . .

  I woke in a double bed. It was pitch black and I had no idea where I was. Stumbling across the cold floor tiles, my hands found a shutter and opened it. I took a deep breath. The mountains were hazy and purple. The sky was crisp and bright blue.

  ‘Eccoci!’ Joe said, resting a tray with warm cannoli, coffee, freshly squeezed blood orange juice and a bottle of lithium on the bedside table.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Better,’ I said, putting the pill in my mouth, tucking myself back in bed and smiling at him. ‘Much better.’

  I didn’t swallow the pill, of course. I’d only recently been freed. I wasn’t going back. Anyway, Joe had fallen in love with the me who boinged on a pogo stick. I didn’t think he’d like a boring lump of nothingness. I’d fess up eventually.

  That day I revelled in my new surroundings. Joe’s house was beautifully decorated – stone walls offset by gleaming white ones, tasteful old-meets-new furniture he’d either inherited or bought, neat tiled floors and a metal spiral staircase leading to the chestnut mezzanine floor. I’d fallen in love with Joe when I first saw his barn conversion. Shallow, I know. But a man with taste! With soft luxurious towels that matched the stone tiles of his wet room – yes, wet room.

  I placed some photographs I’d brought with me on Joe’s mantelpiece – pictures that’d helped me through Cambusvale – of Anna and Mum, mostly. I missed them both already.

  I finally made it outside around lunchtime, where Joe’s mother was hanging white sheets on the line.

  ‘Ciao,’ I said tentatively. I knew she’d be unhappy seeing me again and I was frightened of her reaction. To my surprise, she pegged a sheet and embraced me.

  ‘Ciao bella,’ she said. ‘Hai fame?’

  Like most tourists, I’d only learned enough Italian to eat, find the loo, and seem friendly.

  ‘Si,’ I lied. I wasn’t hungry at all. But if I’d said no, the chasm between us would open again, so I devoured thick, delicious toast with homemade blackberry jam while Joe’s dad watched television and his mum bottled passata.

  She came into Joe’s house at lunchtime (without knocking). I might have been peeved had she not sported a plate of tortelli, placing it on the dining table with a kind smile. Perhaps Joe’s family would be able to see past all that had happened, I thought, as she watched me eat, did the dishes and collected Joe’s washing from his bedroom.

  By the time Joe got home from work, I felt okay, positive even. I was comfortable and I was welcome.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Joe asked, after showering later that night.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, pulling back the bed sheets for him. Hmm.

  Like a one-night stand. A stranger.

  Or an ex, also a stranger, whose skin feels and smells and tastes like salt, like leather, not delicious.

  It’d been a long time since I’d had sex. Maybe it would take a while to feel normal again. Course it would. Or had it always felt like that? Always like banging and bashing and waiting for the next step, the cuddle, the nice cup of tea. Had it? Not with Anna, whose skin was a feather duvet that wrapped me up.

  It’d been a while. I’d get back into it.

  The next morning, I planted another pill under my tongue, and watched Joe’s car disappear down the drive before washing it down the drain. Brimming with energy, I had a shower, went outside, mirrored the wave of Joe’s mother, and retreated to the other side of the house, the private side that overlooked the rooftops of the old town of Sasso.

  I decided that we needed decking. Crescent-shaped. Hidden from the farmhouse of the ever-prying Aged Ps.

  Now.

  In Joe’s tool shed I found an old-fashioned, three-pronged garden fork and used it to stab an outline of the deck area into the hard earth. I waved to my parents-in-law-to-be a couple of times that morning, trying to ignore the worried looks on their faces.

  By the time Joe got home for lunch, I had an impressive trench earmarked for our al fresco dining area.

  ‘Have you been using la forcale della Nonna?’ Joe asked.

  ‘I’m going to build a deck,’ I answered.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ he said.

  ‘But it’d be so beautiful . . . and private.’

  ‘I mean the fork.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll use something else, but what about the deck?’

  ‘The deck is a wonderful idea,’ said Joe, hugging me
tightly and kissing the top of my head. ‘I’ve missed this hair,’ he said, breathing it in. ‘You know I love you, no matter what.’

  When Joe said this, I felt like he’d put a plate of soup in front of me that was just a little bit too cold. I’d ordered it. I should eat it. There was nothing wrong with it, really. Nothing major. But it turned my tummy a tiny bit.

  I didn’t say, ‘I love you too.’

  No matter what. What did that mean?

  Imagine me saying that to him: I love you no matter how clueless you are in bed, no matter how often I’ve tried to point you in the direction of the nodule between and atop the inner folds of my labia minora, no matter how obsessed you are by graves and grandmothers, how mollycoddled you are by your mother, how unkind you’ve been to me, all those months in prison, you big cruel man, no matter.

  Who was he? Who was Johnny, who was Stewart, Rory, Mani? Who the fuck? I had no idea. I felt lonely like I had with them, in a scary, unfamiliar place. I wanted to go home. I wanted Mum, Anna.

  ‘I’ll take that,’ Joe said, carrying the precious fork back to its precious place.

  And why was he so weird about his Nonna? Everything to do with her seemed sacred. After we met, our only big outings had been to her grave on Sundays, and every meal he’d cooked seemed to be something-della-Nonna – lasagne, torta, ravioli, pizza – and now it was forcale della-fucking-Nonna.

  I was beginning to hate the woman. Even the photo on her tomb was scary as all hell, with her pinched little skin-and-bone features and a penetrating look of righteousness in her dark brown eyes.

  ‘Can we go away for the weekend?’ I suggested. Perhaps a neutral place would help me take the plunge – gulp the cool soup, which might be surprisingly appetising after all – and stop these whirring negative thoughts about the man who had taken me back, warts, and more warts, and all.

  ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll check my diary. We could go to the lake. It’s empty now, you know. They’re filling it again at the weekend. We could go to that nice hotel not far from Nonna’s grave.’

  Again, Nonna. Fucking Nonna. What sort of name is Giuseppina anyway? And his diary? Did he have a diary? With secrets in it?

  Bastard.

  Bastard.

  Sometimes when I think of my exes I think of how they hurt me.

  Johnny was desperate for me to start with, couldn’t get enough of me. Wrote me poems. Pressed his forehead to mine.

  But he came onto Anna. He came onto everyone, Anna told me. And then one day, out of the blue, he up and got two more tattoos. I hated tattoos.

  Rory was desperate for me to start with, couldn’t get enough of his breath of fresh air. Gave me expertly administered cunnilingus. Helped me sand skirting boards. Then one day, out of the blue, he said, ‘Catriona, I’m not sure you’re committed to social change.’

  Mani cooked me curries and took me to the Glasgow Film Theatre to see French movies. Then, one day over dinner, he said, ‘My cousin’s getting married. I think I should go.’

  I stayed awake till Joe was snoring soundly beside me. His mouth was slightly ajar, head back, chin up. The fingers of one hand rested on his dark hair.

  I crept out of bed, walked along the landing, down the spiral staircase and into the living room. In the dark, I rummaged through his satchel for his diary, which wasn’t there. I looked in the drawer of the small desk in the hall. Not there either. His car keys were on the desk. I took them, went outside, and opened the passenger door of his four-wheel drive. Okay, so he did have a diary – two, in fact. They were in the glove compartment. One page per day. The first diary opened itself on a day in July.

  ‘Wedding?’ it said.

  I looked at the days before this one – there was nothing in the pages, except, two weeks before the wedding entry, the name ‘Jonathan Hull’.

  This was last year’s diary.

  I grabbed the second one and turned to the coming weekend. Friday night. ‘Giulia – dinner – 7.30’ was written in clear black pen.

  I grabbed the diary, ran into the house, up the stairs, along the hall, and into Joe’s bedroom.

  ‘Who’s Giulia?’ I threw the diary at him.

  ‘Dio cane,’ he said, rubbing his head.

  I waited for him to say something more, but all he did was turn the light on and sit up.

  ‘Who’s Giulia? And why did you put a question mark against our wedding?’

  The silence was interminable. He was about to break my heart. I waited, shaking, but he remained silent.

  ‘Who is Giulia? Who the fuck’s Jonathan Hull?’

  ‘Calm down,’ he answered.

  ‘Answer the fucking question! Who is she? WHO IS SHE?’ ‘Calm down, Catriona, calmati.’

  I hurled myself at him, smashed him in the chest with my fists. A girly and acceptable way to respond to probable infidelity, I reckoned. He didn’t see it that way. He pushed me away from him and I fell off the bed, smashing my head on the floor. The blood felt warm on my forehead as I looked up, expecting him to come to me apologetically and beg for forgiveness.

  Instead he yelled in Italian. I wasn’t sure what he was saying exactly, but his body language and tone translated to something like ‘Take this, you fucking crazy bitch.’

  I’d never been hit by a man before. The nearest had been with Rory, after I kicked the Sony television. He was furious. He clenched his fists. That was scary enough.

  Joe’s palm came down at me and connected with the side of my head. I covered my face with my hands, cowering, hoping he would leave the bedroom, the house, and that I would be safe.

  He stormed out and locked himself in the bathroom next to our bedroom for ages while I packed my suitcases. Then, just as I began to contemplate booking a flight and ringing Anna, he came into the bedroom crying his eyes out.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, falling to his knees and clutching at mine. ‘Please forgive me. I’m so, so sorry. Giulia’s a girl I went out with a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t think you would come. I didn’t know what to think. She’s nothing to me. She’s just a . . . puttana. We made a date for Friday that first time and I haven’t had a chance to explain to her.’

  I wasn’t in a strong position. Joe was the only person who seemed to care about me. He’d forgiven me. He’d promised to look after me.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said again.

  ‘Do you love her?’ I asked, sobbing.

  ‘No. I screwed her, that’s all. As I said, before you came back. You’re going to be my wife, Catriona.’

  ‘You can’t love me, can you? It’s too hard. I’m crazy.’ ‘In sickness and in health.’

  ‘Do you really love me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re fresh and bright and loyal and mine.’

  ‘Am I fat?’

  ‘I like something to hold onto.’

  ‘You think I’m fat.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I think you’re perfect.’

  ‘You said you love me, no matter what. You feel you’ve got damaged goods. You’re being charitable.’

  ‘You are perfect. I’m sorry I said that. I love you. There is nothing else to it.’

  So I forgave him. I told him we would never speak of it. I told him we should go to the hotel tomorrow night and start afresh.

  31

  But, oh God, why had he done that?

  What was going to happen? How was I going to behave now I knew what he’d done?

  Had he kissed her on the breast? Had he kissed her elsewhere, told her she was beautiful?

  ‘You need some rest,’ he said, and I lay down, my mind fizzing.

  I promised him I’d stay in bed for the day.

  We cuddled closely all night, holding onto each other till we fell asleep, both feeling exhausted, guilty and tired. The next morning, he gave me my pill, which I held under my tongue again. Waving from his car, he then headed down the drive.


  I tried to rest as he’d suggested. But adrenaline was welling inside me, affecting my legs first, then buzzing its way towards my chest, shoulders, arms, neck, head. Ah. I had things to do. There was an untouchable fork in a tool shed and an uneven area that needed to be flattened and wood that needed to be purchased and delivered and nailed and . . .

  I had to clean the house first. There were ants crawling in a line under the sink and crumbs under the sofas.

  I cleaned the house till it gleamed, set cushions to sofas, straightened paintings, reorganised bookshelves, filled vases with greenery from the garden and set them on window-sills.

  Then I turned my attention to the outside.

  I dug so hard with the fork my hands were blistered by the time the earth was loose enough to be rearranged and levelled. I stomped and kicked at the dirt till it seemed flat, then walked as fast as I could into Sasso. I remembered there was a builder’s merchant in the new town and, luckily, it was open. I gesticulated madly at the counter until an English-speaking customer translated for me.

  They didn’t have wood.

  ‘Tiles then.’

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘These.’

  ‘I don’t like those.’

  ‘These?’

  ‘Deliver them now.’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘Joe Rossi.’

  ‘Ah, Joe.’

  ‘Yes, Joe. He’ll settle up tomorrow.’

  I had just enough time to put the forcale della nonna in its place when Joe’s car drove up the driveway. He’d left work early for our romantic getaway.

  He was met by me, my hands dirty and bleeding; by his mother, her face white and frightened; by his father, silent as usual; and by a truckload of glorious stone tiles.

  ‘Come and look!’ I urged, dragging him away from his concerned mother and showing him the level, crescent-shaped area I had patted down with hand, foot and body in readiness for the tiles.

  He exhaled and hugged me, then brushed the transferred dirt from his shirt.