by Dawn French
Four o’clock and time for the session with Noel.
He came in and sat down.
He looked too tall for the chair. And as he tugged his trousers up at the knee to sit comfortably, I noticed he wasn’t wearing any socks. Brown ankles. It was pretty routine to begin with. I didn’t say much, just invited him to voice whatever he felt he needed to. He explained to me that most of his therapy so far had been the exploration of his severe loss in early childhood. His mother had died and his father hadn’t been able to cope and so handed him over to his maternal grandmother for safekeeping. He was an only child. The grandmother was not unkind, but she was emotionally chilly, and had always been so. She was also elderly and fairly infirm, so not much fun. He looked away as he told me how abandoned he had felt. How responsible. Responsible for his gran, responsible for his mother’s death and responsible for his father’s ineptitude. A whole bunch of misguided culpability.
He seemed to have investigated it pretty thoroughly, as a Kleinian practitioner should, and spoke of learning not to beat himself up. He also spoke of an awareness of his propensity to extol women, genuinely being inspired by certain women and less so, if ever, by any man. I was interested to note that he acknowledged there are remarkable praiseworthy men, but possibly because of his need for his absent mother, he finds himself less critical of women and even pathologically eulogistic.
This was all quite compelling for me since, working with adolescents the majority of the time, I come across very few idolatrous complexes of this nature. Then I remembered that he had indeed told me that he ‘admired’ me, and I suggested this might be symptomatic of what he was referring to. He went very quiet, and for a long minute he didn’t speak and kept his head bowed. I thought he was contemplating the session and all we had just discussed.
Then he looked up, sighed and began:
The dawn was apple-green,
The sky was green wine held up under the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.
She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone
For the first time, now for the first time seen.
He just kept looking at me, holding my gaze. Daring me to look away. Neither of us spoke. I felt as if I had been tipped out of my life. What was taking place? I had no tools, no equipment, no idea how to deal with this moment. Then he said,
‘D. H. Lawrence. It’s true, Mo. For the first time seen …’
He left the room. Left me sitting there alone with that still hanging in the air. I was stock-still but my mind was fizzing. I tried to rewind it in my head and play it again to understand it. What? WHAT? I felt like I’d been punched. Then I felt like I wanted to be punched again immediately. Come back and punch me again so I can try to understand it. What did he mean? Are they my green eyes?
How many minutes passed? Could have been three, could have been three hundred, before Lisa knocked on my door to chase me out. Then, somehow, I drove home, feeling as if I was starring in my own foreign film. It was all so shocking and strange. Perhaps my life from now on will have subtitles and be permanently incomprehensible. I arrived home and I came in here, into my lair, to sit and stare. So here I am.
My family are gathering out there, in my home. Is everything different?
What now?
FORTY-FIVE
Dora
Eating only meringues and butter beans. Still fat.
I am so going on Facebook for ages tonight.
I know I’m supposed to like be revising ’n’ shizz but it’s not my fault Mum took me to see the nurse just before exams. It was like so major. I need to talk about it.
Mum drove me there in silence, then sat outside coz I didn’t want her in, so she sulked. I didn’t know there were so many options. Oh my like bloody actual God – the nurse like showed me EVERYTHING. She was the cutest loveliest lady, and I couldn’t believe how young she was. It was so cool because she was talking to me like I was an adult ’n’ stuff. We had a big laugh when I was a twat and got in a muddle … She said that she wanted to go through everything to do with birth control. I said I didn’t need that. She said how come. I said because I’m not controlling any birth. She said that ‘birth control’ is just another name for contraception and we both agreed that was a stupid name.
Anyway then she got all the stuff out and laid it on a table. Omitriplegod! There was a patch you put on your bum (huge plaster), the pill (makes you fatter), condom (old balloon), women’s condom (bin bag), cap (midget speed skater’s helmet), natural family planning (calendar and thermometer – need Maths), injection (an actual injection, with an actual needle), implant (microchip), IUS/IUD (tiny metal anchors that go all the way up inside, ow), sterilization (cut tubes).
Everything looked pretty rank except the pill which looks just like pills. I said I wanted that, twelve packets please, and she said, since I’m not having sex at the moment, I should go home and take time to think through my options. She was so kind and cool. She said she didn’t have sex ’til she was twenty and that no one should force me into it. She sounded just like Nana Pamela.
Then she told me that whatever method I choose I always need to use a condom because boys can carry diseases and stuff. God, boys are like so disgusting sometimes. Then she opened a condom packet and we practised putting one on a banana. It was sooo hilarious. She was really good at it, she must be really experienced. Not like a slut or anything but she really knows her way round a banana.
She got a bit serious when she was telling me all the bad sides of everything, like terrible periods, getting fat, headaches, sore tits, pain, being sick, blood clots, bruising, sore fanny, pain and more pain. On top of that, none of the choices are 110% safe and you can still catch herpes. Bloody hell. She asked me, coz I said I wanted the pill, if I was the kind of person who would remember to take a pill at exactly the same time every day. I said that yes, I was, and I heard a loud cough from Mum outside the door, who was obviously listening in all the bloody time! Sooo embarrassing. I was proper livid with her in the car on the way back but she just said the walls are made of cardboard at the doctors’ and you can hear everything. Yeah thanks, I really wanna go back there. Not.
It’s gonna be great on Facebook tho, I’ve told all my friends to look out for my status which I’m going to update in like fifteen minutes to: STATUS: OWNER OF 20 NEW CONDOMS. She gave me twenty for God’s sake! Couldn’t believe it! Think I might invite Lottie over to open a few (never with your teeth, she told me that really clearly … and never with scissors …) and do some practice. It would be sooo funny coz Mum has a banana like every morning for breakfast, and she would like be eating the one we put all the condoms on. That would be well wak. Serves her right for being the nosiest parker that ever parked her nose in nosey parker town centre.
We hardly spoke a single word all the way home, which is how it is at the moment. She hates me. I hate her. So at least it’s like equal. She asked two lame questions. Honestly. Oh my days. One was if I knew how Peter got all those love bites all over his neck and one even on his face? I said no comment. The second was so bloody sarcastic. She asked me if I knew that my A level exams are next week? Yes, o mentally disturbed mother, I DO know thank you very much …
FUCK! FUCK!! FUCK!!! My A level exams are next week!!!
FORTY-SIX
Mo
Several times today, I completely forgot to breathe. Luckily my body is remembering all the essential functions through sheer force of habit, otherwise I’m not sure I would be walking, talking, driving working or anything. All my inner clocks have stopped, I’m in a time fermata, yet I appear to be continuing on. No one else has noticed, I don’t think. They are all behaving towards me as if it were any old normal day. As if my circuit wasn’t entirely rewired. As if I was the same Mo as before it happened. I’m not. I’m different and changed and awake. I’ve woken up. I’m wide awake.
I have seen him each day but not alone yet. He has no qualms about looking m
e in the eye. We discuss what needs to be discussed but there is undoubtedly something more that’s unsaid. I feel as if there is something new showing on me and I think only he can see it. Perhaps it’s that I am seeing myself reflected in him, as someone … I don’t know … somehow more than I was.
And I see him completely differently. Well – I just see him. I like his crisp white shirts and his watch that has a proper leather strap and the shape of his square shoulders and the length of his legs and the crescent grooves at the corners of his mouth, so used to folding when he smiles, which he so often does. And the smile … Why doesn’t anybody see? Why don’t they notice the meteor flash that occurs when he does that? Why doesn’t it blind them? It floods the room. It floods me.
I have shamelessly curtailed several sessions mid-crisis in the hope of catching a moment near him, around him, in the kitchen or the hallway, or anywhere. Not a word has been said. Yet volumes are spoken. I am utterly aware of his presence all day long. I am tuned to him. I know which room he’s in, I hear his footfall outside my door, I’m aware of wherever he is and I am drawn to that place.
I can’t voice any of it yet to him. I mustn’t, because I’m not entirely sure that I’m not insane and haven’t wildly exaggerated some figment of my imagination. Is this some hideously cruel trick the menopause is playing on me? Have all my senses deserted me and in their place left a sugary Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem for me to reference as my only emotional landmark? Are the sentiments of cheesy greetings cards my sole measure?
I will be beside myself until our next private session in a few days. Maybe then, I will have some answers and be able to make sense of what is presently wholly unfathomable. And wholly intoxicating.
I wish I wasn’t looking forward to it so much. I wish I could feel more sensible, more rational. I’m not either. Good God, I’m giddy.
FORTY-SEVEN
Oscar
Today was the Day of Days. I would dare even Larry to be as happy as I was first thing. Knowing that 4.30pm was going to usher in the golden moment, the rest of the day decided not to upstage it and to remain unshiny. School was simply school, odious, drab and functional. I received yet another uniform penalty when I resolutely refused to don an unsightly tabard with a huge ugly label displaying my ‘team number’ for rounders.
It is already a source of great ignominy to myself and my fellow sports outcasts that we are forced to take part in this joyless ritual each time there is a physical education class. We are a noble band of conscientious objectors who ought rightly to be hallowed for our courage in defying the evil Nazis who run the PE department. Instead, we are mocked and scolded and publicly shamed into running around in pointless circles sporting offensively gauche tabards. I am not, and never shall I be, a number. I am marvellous and enchanting, and they shall never diminish me with their childish games.
There followed a dreary lunch in the dreary cafeteria where the only surety is that one’s lunch must, by order of the kitchen, be dreary. I could not distinguish between the meat and the vegetables in the sloppy offering, so slimy was the fare. The only tantalizing moment was when Wilson scuttled by, amongst a flock of squeaky young Year 9ers, and dropped a note into my lap. Quelle interesting. I read,
‘I too, am enchanting. Notice it, whydoncha?’
Just as I suspected, and as is the natural order, Wilson has evidently fallen in love with me. I have to admit that I don’t find him entirely displeasing either, and now that I know about his tragic background I feel drawn to the constant and beautiful pain of the tortured little mite. There are those who regard him as a puss and a wimp. I don’t. I know him to be the survivor of immense sorrow and grief. Although small and delicate in stature, he is a lionheart. A clandestine lionheart. I wish I could reciprocate his advances, but it would be cruel to lead him on. He knows my heart is pledged to another, and thus, must accept his fate as the sole occupant of the reserve bench. On this throne, he is undoubtedly the prince … but there is a king who yet awaits my attention …
3.28pm. 3.29pm. 3.30pm … where is the infernal bell? Why doesn’t it ring to release me from the torment that is double chemistry with old Cock Cooper? 3.31pm. A minute that disguised itself as an hour … and there at last it was. A short and clear peal of a bell to announce the birth of my happiness.
A quick grooming session, the exact same outfit as was intended before, some fleet footwork, and I was at the practice by 4.20pm. I briefly espied Mama hurriedly ushering out a ‘troubled teen’. She was a tad brief with me and said that she might need to foreshorten my hour with Noel in order to have some obscure meeting with him. I quickly put her right and assured her that was not about to happen under any circumstances, that it was a monstrous suggestion, that I was in dire need of this therapy and that I was entitled to my full hour, thank you very much indeed. Wisely, she backed off.
I took a big gulp of peppermint mouth spray and sat on the chair outside his room. It occurred to me that these were to be my final moments. The last ticking minutes of my life BEFORE Noel. Pretty soon I would be referring to now as ‘before’. ‘Before’ we were together, ‘Before’ we met, ‘Before we knew our futures were bound together’. We will laugh and call these times ‘Back then’. This is now, and now is as nothing compared to the bliss of what will be in a matter of minutes. The threshold of his door is the portal to my paradise. Once I cross it, I doubt I will ever return. This is it. The point of no return. The beginning. Hello, new start … Hello …
‘Hello?’
Yes … ‘Hello’ …
‘Hello, Peter, sorry, did you doze off? Come on in.’
He was there, all of a splendid sudden, speaking out loud, as if out of the ether. I followed him in, and took up my place on the sofa. I cursed myself as soon as I sat, realizing I still had my dratted dreadful school blazer on. I had fully intended to remove it at the outset, otherwise he might think me some kind of measly schoolkid. I felt it would be too fussy and draw attention should I struggle to remove it then, but I was secretly heartbroken to think he wouldn’t witness my ruffled linen shirt, which I have introduced to some bleach since I last wore it, in an effort to return its luminosity. (Not an entirely successful enterprise, but it’s marginally brighter than the tepid grey it had become.) I thanked God that at least I had snipped a bloom, a sassy orange gerbera, from the Headmaster’s splendid front garden, to slip in my lapel, and it proudly sat there, defying my love to overlook me.
As I remember it, the next little while went something like this:
NOEL: So, Peter …
ME: Oscar, please. If you would be so kind.
NOEL: I would actually like to speak with Peter initially.
ME: Sorry?
NOEL: Could I speak with Peter? Would Oscar allow that?
ME: Well, yes of course, for they are both me.
NOEL: I realize that, but I would like Oscar to leave us alone for a while. Could you ask him to do that?
ME: Forgive me, I couldn’t possibly do that.
NOEL: Who am I speaking to now?
ME: Why, my dear chap, to me of course.
NOEL: Which ‘me’ are you referring to?
ME: Me, Peter. And also me, Oscar. For we are one.
NOEL: I see. This is a more considerable situation than I’d thought.
ME: How so?
NOEL: Peter, I will need you to push through so that we can discuss Oscar. Come forward, Peter, please.
ME: Darling one, you are addressing me as if I were dead. And you were Doris Stokes. Please desist, we have so much to say and nonsensical prattle of this sort just fritters away our precious time together. Now, pin yer shell-likes back and prepare to be flattered …
NOEL: I only want to speak with Peter, please.
ME: Sweetheart, understand that I am Peter. That is my given name, but I beg you to try and comprehend the misery of a lifetime with such an inconsequential label. It’s a kind of daily death. My parents are evidently sadists. So, you see, I decided to ring th
e changes and claim a more fitting moniker. Simple as that. Admittedly, I feel a certain affinity with the mighty Oscar Wilde. I am, let’s say, a fan. That’s all. I have always read him and always adored him, but, dearest, I don’t imagine I am him. Not at all. I should be so blessed! I simply offer a bounteous and elegant display of substantial and tempting passions for life and for love. I am what we English do best, sir – I am not a crackpot – I am an eccentric. All hail everything enchanting! SILENCE
