Thorn in the Flesh

by Anne Brooke

  It’s worth it, she thought. Whatever happens after this, it’s worth it for the small moments, wherever you can find them.

  ***

  The next day, a Friday, was the hottest so far of the year, both here and, according to the morning’s English language news broadcast, back in the UK. Kate dressed in a skirt and thin cotton blouse and, because of the legacy from her red hair, applied her sunscreen liberally. She’d decided on a day of leisurely sightseeing. Just like a normal person, just like someone who hadn’t been attacked and nearly killed. Today, she promised herself, she would be open to the moment, as she had been yesterday evening. Going back to work had proved she was weaker than she had imagined and so, from somewhere, she had to find new strength. Nicky had suggested counselling, which was one solution, but Kate knew she had been right to reject the idea. She would have to find another way.

  Sightseeing in Bruges couldn’t help but include the churches. From the moment Kate stepped into the wall of warming air outside the hotel, she was indeed summoned by bells. In tunes. She recognised Beethoven’s Ode to Joy and, later, the Toreador’s Song from Carmen, but was unable to place the others.

  The first church she slipped into, St Anne’s, was an exercise in Roman splendour: golden candlesticks nearly her own height and ornately carved chandeliers. She saw genuine worshippers here also, a fact which made Kate want to turn back, but she found the determination to stride past the bevy of old women in scarves and brown skirts and sit down to admire history. Closing her eyes and breathing in the recent echo of incense, Kate found herself wondering how it would be to take part in a service here when she knew so little of the tradition. Her own forebears were Calvinist, though neither of her parents had ever been serious about their faith. Neither, in truth, was she.

  At lunch, she wondered if she could perhaps become a different person, if she could open up in the warmth of the air and the wide blue skies in a way it was impossible to do at home. Or perhaps she could work towards becoming more nearly herself, whatever that might be. It was something she thought she’d left behind by choice a long time ago but, since the attack, and for whatever reason, the barrier between who she was now and who she’d been once was growing thinner, more fragile. A barrier not even Nicky was allowed to walk through. What would she do if – when – it crumbled?

  Later, she wandered on through the cobbled streets, basking in the sunshine. At the Church of the Holy Blood, she hesitated and then turned through the doorway, walking up the winding stairs past a long line of colourful posters she didn’t stop to read. A notice on the table inside told her that the veneration of the holy blood would take place today at 2.30pm and she was welcome to stay if she wished. She raised her eyebrows. She’d never attended such a ceremony before. It would be something to tell Nicky.

  The area she found herself in wasn’t as decorative or as large as she’d expected though she could see the requisite main altar and side altars, and the smell of incense lingered in the air. The side altar was set at right angles to the main body of the church and a series of steps led up to its long table from three sides. In front, several rows of chairs completed the impression of a small but significant theatre.

  Kate sat down to wait. Her guidebook told her the church had been named after a small sample of Christ’s blood which had been saved from the cross and carried through many years and journeys, eventually arriving in Bruges, where it had remained. Apparently, on occasion, the dried blood liquefied again for no known reason, but this had not happened for many years. She smiled. How could anyone believe such a story? Still, she would stay and see what happened. There could be no hypocrisy in that.

  Over the tannoy system, announcements were made about the service in a variety of languages, and people began to drift in and take their places, scattered like stones over the body of the church. At 2.30pm, the sound of a bell heralded the arrival of a priest in white robes holding a slender gold and silver tube on an embroidered cloth. He placed it onto a small cushion as if the least knock might shatter it and proceeded to pray, again in various languages. Despite herself, Kate began to pay more attention. She watched as one by one people drifted across the staging, stood for a moment in front of the priest with their hands laid across the artefact, heads bowed, before picking up a card or receiving a blessing and moving on. Even though she didn’t believe, she still found unexpected tears pricking the backs of her eyes. Perhaps it didn’t matter whether the blood on the cushion was real or not; perhaps what made it count was faith. Of which she had none, or not enough to join them, but still it moved her.

  Towards the middle of the afternoon, she found herself at the Groeningen Museum. From Nicky, she knew the collection, although small, was well worth viewing and she should particularly not miss Bosch’s Last Judgement in the first room. At the time she’d said nothing to her friend, but this picture was one she didn’t want to see. To avoid the decision, she turned away from the smattering of art tourists following the requested chronology and began her viewing in the last, more modern rooms. Even this slight disobedience to a subtle instruction made her check to see if anyone had noticed, but nobody had. So, with a shake of the shoulders and a reminder to herself that she was an adult, not a child, after all, she carried on.

  She enjoyed the modern art more than she’d anticipated. There was something liberating about the pieces on display, even if she didn’t understand them, something that invited her to step for a while out of her preconceptions and try another way of seeing. For the first time in many weeks she felt herself relax. The piece which made her laugh out loud was the one she’d thought she’d hate; an installation of two mirrors on opposing walls framed by dried plants and flowers. When she gazed into them, Kate could see herself on all sides surrounded by nature and the impression of a garden. Leaning closer, she was sure she could catch the hint of herbs and roses, but wondered if it was simply because she wanted to believe it. Much like the worshippers at the Church of the Holy Blood.

  At last she found herself back in the first exhibition room. She’d come full circle and the Bosch painting was still waiting for her, centrally displayed on the far wall. Heart beating fast, she turned away, pretending to wander round the other exhibits, although she saw none of them.

  Finally, telling herself she wasn’t going to be beaten by canvas or paint, she swung round in slow deliberation and strode over to take in what Nicky had been so rapturous about.

  It didn’t make her feel the way she had expected.

  She gazed at the small twisted figures going down into hell on the right, their strange shapes, the combinations of man and animal, lust and despair, the artist’s dark vision of things to come. Then she looked at the contrasting picture of heaven on the top left, its surroundings bathed in paint’s representation of light but their wild confusion somehow the same as the damned. She’d thought the expressions on the faces of the people and beasts might mimic her own confusion over the attack – no, call it what it was, the rape – and what had happened during and after it. She’d imagined, after Nicky’s enthusiastic description of the work, that she’d feel beaten, bitter or sick. Instead she felt only compassion. For herself and for people in general, with all their striving, hope, despair, for the things they could change and the things they could not. When she felt something on her face and raised her hand to brush it off, her fingers came away wet and she half-smiled at her own weakness.

  She would tell Nicky how much she’d enjoyed her recommendation, but not how it had moved her. Not yet.

  After supper, which Kate took at another of the main square cafés, she wandered down to a lake and sat watching the swans for a while, before making her way back to the hotel via the newly-built concert hall. It was just after 10pm and crowds of smartly-dressed concert-goers were milling in the courtyard, talking, laughing, heading to the nearby cafés. Kate regretted she hadn’t realised there had been a performance tonight. If she’d thought to ask, she might have enjoyed it. Still, it had been good to be
alone; it hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared. Even now, she acknowledged the romance of the place, and how it awoke no vibes in her. Perhaps now it never would. If that was the case, it didn’t strike her as a loss to grieve over and she would have to live with the legacy. She had no choice.

  It was only when she was near the hotel that she realised one important fact. Earlier today, she’d admitted the word to herself, the one she’d been refusing even to think. There in the Groeningen Museum she’d voiced the truth for the first time, even if only privately. I’ve been raped, she thought, I’ve been raped, but I’m still here. Perhaps still being here is what matters.

  For now.

  ***

  After a night too hot to sleep in, Kate lay in bed for longer than usual before getting up to shower. Her eyes felt as if they could sleep for several more hours but something in her mind was more at ease. Or rather working towards that state of being.

  Outside, the day seemed likely to be cooler than the one before and Kate noted her automatic relief. Almost as a nod to this archetypal Britishness, she made a brief detour to Frank Brangwyn’s museum, a Welshman born in Bruges. Like her, he’d carried his background and culture with him; his drawings were dark and dour, mainly of men working on their own or with two or three others on the railways, at the mines or in the fields. They spoke of effort and productivity, of a harsh journey through to a reason for existence. A vision of reality, not the wild imaginings of yesterday’s Bosch. Perhaps she needed them both. As she left the museum, her thoughts made her smile; if she was using art as a metaphor for living, then Nicky’s artistic talent and approach to the world must finally be making its influence felt.

  When she left, walking out into the nakedness of the sun, something within her crystallised into a knowledge she couldn’t yet put into words or even thoughts. Perhaps she had no wish to. Still she thought of the letters she’d been receiving, both before and after the attack, and the telephone call she hadn’t yet made. Perhaps when she returned home, she would be able to face those things at last.

  She wandered on and, with each step, she could feel the constraints of the past slipping away. Near the hotel, she paused outside St John’s Hospital museum and decided, yes, she would see it today. Inside, all was quiet and the large hall was divided lengthways with a series of cased exhibits and arches. As Nicky had recommended, she made her way to the small rooms at the very end in which the paintings of Hans Memling were kept.

  Two seconds after she walked up to the first triptych, she felt herself shiver. It wasn’t fear; merely the vibrancy and depth of the colours which seemed to reach out and touch her, pull her into their world. The people depicted were so different from herself in the world she lived in, and the man who’d painted them had existed centuries ago of course, but something about the delicacy of the brushstrokes, the cool flesh tones and the near-solidity of the fabric made her feel that in only a moment or two the people in the picture would smile, stretch, get up and go about their business as if the life which had once flowed through their veins continued to do so still.

  It was with reluctance that Kate finally walked away, looking back twice as if to implant the memory of something good into her mind. Upstairs in the hospital museum, a display of black and white photography by Greta Buysse dominated the walls and Kate strolled round, admiring the fusion of the subtle and the powerful, the secular and the religious, in the portraits mainly of women, some naked, some masked. She smiled at the two versions of the female last supper, the women wearing Venetian masks and captured in stylised poses. It was the photograph entitled Le Voyage Interdit, however, which gripped her. A woman’s body from the thighs upwards stood at the forefront of the shot, a wisp of pale cotton covering her pubic hair. Her head and body were turned slightly to her right and behind her a masked man gripped the tops of her arms with white-gloved hands. Kate gazed at it and knew she should have found it disturbing. But the truth was she didn’t; whatever was going on in the narrative between the couple in front of her had nothing to do with anything she’d experienced at the hands of another, crueller, man.

  That night, lying in bed and trying in vain to sleep, she thought not about the photograph, but about the Memling triptych. The past doesn’t die, she realised. It’s always there. In the world, in the people she met, in herself. More than anything that had happened today, it was the knowledge of this which made her cry.

  Later, on the train home, she knew that something had been decided.

  It was time to stop running away. She had to live the rest of her life. And in order to do that, now more than ever she had to go back to the beginning of it all. She had to find out the truth.

  Chapter Nine

  At home, she listened to messages from the university and from Nicky. All expressed different degrees of reassurance and understanding. Professor Dickinson told her, in his hesitant and concerned tones, that she had no need to come back at all until September, but he’d be in touch anyway over the summer vacation. She deleted the message. She’d ring him later. Not now. Now wasn’t a time for comfort or support. Now was a time for purpose. She then listened to two messages from Nicky, rang her friend and left a further message, promising to call later.

  Nicky returned her call within the hour.

  ‘How was your break?’

  ‘Good, thank you. It made me think.’

  ‘In a good way, or a less good way?’

  Kate smiled down the phone. ‘You can say the word, “bad,” Nicky. It’s not illegal. But, no, it was a good way, I think. I’ve made some decisions.’

  ‘Oh?’ Nicky’s response was cautious; the voice of a friend who would support her, no matter what, but hoped that the support would be for something wise. ‘What do you plan to do?’

  The answer Kate gave wasn’t the one she was intending.

  ‘I’m going to leave my job,’ she said.

  As she said the words, she noticed a cobweb clinging to the corner of the wall near the door and moved to brush it away. At the last second, she decided against it and let it hang undisturbed.

  ‘I thought you loved your job,’ Nicky was saying. ‘You’ve always got so much out of it. Are you sure you want to make this decision now? Maybe you should wait a while?’

  ‘No, I’m sure. I didn’t know I was sure before I said it, but I know now.’

  A pause followed, and Kate could imagine Nicky frowning, brushing her dark hair away from her face, and leaving smears of paint behind.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Nicky asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Not yet. There are things I have to do before I decide. That’s what I’d like to talk to you about. I need your advice. I know it’s Bank Holiday still, but what about early next week? Would that be all right? You could come here? Or I could come to you?’

  ‘No, that’s okay. I’ll come over,’ Nicky lowered her voice. ‘It’ll give me a break from David’s mother. How about tomorrow evening, when the twins are in bed?’

  ‘No, don’t be ridiculous. It’s a holiday. You’ll want to be with your husband. Tuesday will be fine, if that’s free for you?’

  In the background, Kate could hear a muffled conversation taking place: David’s low tones; a shriek from one of the twins; an unfamiliar woman’s sharp voice – David’s mother, she presumed. Despite herself, she felt a pang of remembrance for the days when she and Nicky were both single. Selfish. She shook her head. She was being ridiculous; of course she was glad her friend was happy with the life she’d chosen. Of course she was. Then Nicky was back on the line. ‘That’s fine, Kate. David should be back by 7pm on Tuesday. How does 8.30 sound?’

  ‘It sounds good. Thank you.’

  Kate spent the rest of the day tidying up the garden, reading and thinking. She flipped through the programmes for the two local theatres, both of which she supported. It seemed a lifetime ago when she’d last been to the theatre, and now she couldn’t even remember what it was she’d seen. Had everything altered so much? No. She still found
herself drawn to some of the forthcoming productions. In that sense at least, she was the same woman, even though everything might be about to change. She’d book one or two, and ask Nicky if she wanted to come as well. Not that it mattered if she didn’t. Kate was happy to see plays on her own. Or she had been. Would she feel the same now after the rape? Or would she be aware of people looking, wondering about her? Even whispering? No, she mustn’t be stupid. If she let those feelings overcome her, she would never be able to live her life in the way she wanted to.

  Shaking her head, she turned back to the theatre programme. A play called National Hero caught her eye. It starred Nichola McAuliffe: another strong draw. She’d almost added it to her mental list when the red-printed warning, Contains Strong Language and Adult Themes, put her off. She was through with those, wasn’t she? She’d had enough adult themes in her recent history to last her until the final curtain fell.

  Suddenly, shockingly, she was laughing. Great waves of it ricocheted up through her body and into her mouth so she couldn’t contain the sounds. He hadn’t beaten her, the bastard. After all. The bastard hadn’t beaten her. She was laughing. Even now. The stupid, violent, miserable bastard. She’d had enough of adult themes, whatever they bloody well were, and she was deciding here and now to take no more of them. In whatever form they might appear. Stuffing her fists against her mouth, she rocked with the fierce joy of it. Even the knowledge of the swear words in her thoughts, words she’d never used, or not for a long time, made her laugh. She was free to decide. Free to live in any bloody way she chose.