Second Skin

by Wendy Perriam

  Suddenly the ocean parted as a vast tidal wave began gathering speed and she was swept along in a rush of power and energy, rolling over and over and over in the exhilarating, brilliant, endless now.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  She crouched on the pavement, clutching her thin dress round her knees. Her teeth were chattering with cold, yet her head burned and she was drenched with sweat. She had been calling out for help, but no one heard. There were only drunks in the Holloway Road.

  She licked her lips. Thirst gnawed her throat, a physical pain. She would gladly have lapped from a puddle, but the gutter was dusty-dry. She groped her hand along it and encountered an empty can. Desperate for a few dregs of liquid – beer, Coke, anything – she tried to pick it up. But her fingers wouldn’t obey her and closed on empty air.

  Tears slid down her face again. Crying hurt. Her eyes grated in their sockets as if they’d been taken out and rolled in grit, then shoved roughly back in place. She watched the tears make damp spots on her dress. It was dark in the street but a lamp-post cast an eerie glow, and cars flashed past occasionally, tearing up the shadows, their headlights blinding and then gone.

  Footsteps were approaching – lurching, coming closer. A man in a ragged overcoat drew level with her; stopped. Swarthy skin, black hair. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, though he seemed to be waiting for an answer. She tried to make her voice work, but her tongue lay like a dead thing in her mouth. None the less, she was glad he was there. It made her feel less lonely.

  Moments passed. She could hear her teeth still chattering in the silence. Then another car sped by, uniting them in a split second’s roar and glare.

  Darkness again. Silence. The man muttered to himself, then stooped towards her, his face within inches of hers. His lips were blotched with sores; his teeth mottled and uneven. He seemed to be speaking with no sound, and she all but retched at the reek of beer and piss. She too must smell repulsive: her body stale with sweat; vomit on her dress.

  He was holding out his hand to her: a dirty hand with broken nails and bits of frayed sticking-plaster on the fingers. But it might help her to stand up. She couldn’t do it on her own. She reached out her own hand and made miraculous shaky contact. And somehow she was stumbling to her feet and they were clinging to each other, her dress crushed against the rough fabric of his coat. She felt tears sting her eyes again. She loved this man – her protector and her brother; all that remained of her family. But he too was abandoning her, staggering off again, his shadow limping behind him.

  He tottered into an alleyway and the tall buildings closed in round him, swallowing up his traces.

  She was utterly alone.

  Chapter Thirty

  Catherine jolted awake. For endless hours sleep had been a rollercoaster, plunging her into nightmare, then shuddering back up a slow, uneasy incline, only to crash down again into terrifying panic. But every time she woke, there had been a point of light in the darkness, a reassuring presence, a soft voice.

  It was speaking now, close to her ear. Was she all right? Would she like some water?

  An arm helped her sit up, held a glass to her lips. Her throat felt bruised and raw. Swallowing was painful.

  The voice asked again how she was feeling.

  ‘Cold,’ she whispered. ‘Cold.’

  ‘I’ll fetch another blanket.’

  ‘No! Don’t go.’ She couldn’t bear to be alone again. She clutched the arm. She couldn’t see the rest of the person. Everything was blurred – everything but her blazing thirst.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m here. I’m with you. Can you get back to sleep, d’you think?’

  The questions were so difficult. Had she been asleep? Did you sleep in the street? She shook her head. More pain.

  The arm was spreading something over her, something warm and comforting. Then it began to stroke her hair. The rollercoaster subsided.

  She closed her eyes, sank down.

  Chapter Thirty One

  Lying back against the pillows, she watched the shirting patterns of sunlight on the carpet. The window was wide open and it seemed a minor miracle that she could look into the light without her eyes hurting. She could even hold a glass and drink. She savoured the cool refreshing sharpness of the grapefruit juice. One took so much for granted: being able to swallow without a feeling of obstruction, or eat without throwing up.

  She refilled the glass from the carton Will had left by the bed, together with other things he’d thought of: fruit, yogurt, Marmite and Ryvita, his treasured childhood copy of The Wind in the Willows and a pile of paperbacks. His devotion had amazed her. Instead of greeting her with fury and recrimination when she limped in at dawn on Saturday, he had put her to bed and nursed her like a baby, refusing to leave her side until this morning. He hadn’t even made a scene about her going off with Brad – who, apparently, had called round in the early hours, desperate for news of her.

  Deeply ashamed of having worried them so much, she sat staring into her glass. Both had feared the worst, and indeed, considering the state she was in and the dangers of the street, she was lucky to have got home in one piece. (Though quite how she’d got home she couldn’t remember at all.)

  Slowly she swung her legs out of bed and drifted to the window, leaning on the windowsill and looking out at the scene below. She found its very ordinariness reassuring: litter-strewn pavements, graffitied walls, people trudging past with cartons of milk and armloads of Sunday papers; a couple of rollerblading tearaways zigzagging perilously down the middle of the road. From this perspective, Friday night seemed a hallucination, out of focus and frighteningly extreme in both its highs and lows. This morning she had discovered that the Ecstasy tablet was no longer in the pocket of her dress. Of course, it could have fallen out, but …

  Frantically, she gulped more juice, as if, even at this remove, it would flush out whatever it was she had swallowed. She still couldn’t quite believe that a middle-aged woman who never touched drugs and was wary even of aspirin had taken hash on top of alcohol, and probably E as well. How else could she have danced so long, with such spontaneous rapturous energy?

  She wandered out to the bathroom. She would have a bath and wash her hair – wash away the whole outlandish experience and get back to normality. Not that it was normal to be lying in bed at well past noon on a Sunday. Will had left hours ago, without a murmur of complaint, although she knew he hated running the stall on his own.

  In the bathroom she found more proof of his devotion. The bath and basin were gleaming, the towels neatly folded on the rail; he had even washed the floor.

  She ran a bath and a few minutes later was lying in pine-scented foam, feeling very nearly content. Although the aftermath of Friday had been horrendous, there were positive aspects too: the rare and unforgettable sensation of ecstasy (whether drug-induced or not) and the healing of the breach with Will. This morning he had admitted that imagining her mugged or raped (or worse) had brought home to him how shockingly he had taken her for granted. He had resolved from this day on to do his share of the cooking and cleaning; he would even tackle the repairs on the car. She smiled to herself, unable to quite believe in this new paragon. Still, he had made an impressive start and she had apologized in her turn for putting him through so much over the last two days.

  After a luxurious half-hour soak she went back to the other room and slipped one of his old shirts on. She had promised not to move from the flat or do anything too arduous, so there was little point in getting dressed. She picked up The Wind in the Willows and sat with it at his desk. Even the desk was unnaturally tidy, cleared of everything save his crocodile poem. She read the poem slowly, awed by the startling use of language: the way he made you see and feel and almost taste the crocodile; undercutting the sadness with little barbs of humour. She realized she had taken him for granted as much as he had her. A man of such talent couldn’t be judged by ordinary standards. She must try to be more tolerant, less nit-picking. And above all, the
y must find a nicer flat. Then they could start again – rethink everything: work, money, shopping, chores. It was still possible to build a life together, if they were both prepared to make concessions.

  Looking up, she happened to catch Gerry’s eye. Behind him smiled Andrew and Antonia; Jack and Maureen on the shelf above; Kate in splendid isolation on the mantelpiece. It was a bit insensitive to have all the family photos on display. No wonder Will had made that remark about waking up to her brilliant actor-husband every morning.

  Impulsively she collected them up and shoved them into a drawer. All except Gerry. It would be callous to consign him to oblivion – the man she had loved and lived with over half her life. While she was still debating what to do with him, the phone rang. It was probably Will – he had said he’d ring at lunchtime to see how she was. It suddenly occurred to her that he might have heard compromising rumours. Gossip spread like wildfire in the market and several people had seen her leave the Stag with Brad. And Brad himself was bound to have regaled his friends with an account of her night on the tiles.

  ‘Er, hello,’ she said, defensively.

  ‘Oh, Mum, you’re in! Thank goodness. I thought you’d be at the market. I’ve just this minute got back from the hospital and …’

  ‘Hospital?’ Catherine gripped the receiver. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m okay. It was this cyclist – he crashed into the Jeep. Shivan was driving me to Palwai to pick up an old typewriter, and this crazy guy just shot out of a side street right in front of us. We took him straight to hospital, but we had to wait for ages and I … I was sure he was going to die. He just lay there, sort of horribly still. And well … I kept thinking about Dad. It brought it all back again – I mean, first Venu’s death, then this. Well actually he didn’t die. It was only concussion and he’s going to be all right, they said. But it made me feel how … how fragile we are. One minute everything’s fine, then out of the blue – bang! – that’s it. And I suddenly thought, suppose something had happened to you. I might not have heard all this way away, but you could be lying in a pool of blood, or … Oh, I know it’s stupid and I’m probably just in shock or something, but I had to ring and find out if you’re okay.’

  Yes,’ she lied convincingly, ‘I’m perfectly all right. Look, let me ring you back and we’ll have a proper chat.’

  ‘But it’s so expensive for you, Mum. Our phone calls seem to get longer and longer and it’s always your bill.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. Just give me a couple of minutes.’ She closed the window against the noise, trying not to think about how horribly close to reality Kate’s picture of her had been. It was true – anything could happen.

  She got through again without too much delay and the line was mercifully clear.

  ‘Mum, how do you deal with death? Shit – that’s a really naff question, isn’t it?’

  An impossible question, she thought. She and Will discussed it sometimes, but Will’s contention that poets could keep people alive (as Shakespeare had with the Dark Lady of the Sonnets, or Thomas Hardy with his first wife) was little compensation for the personal pain.

  ‘I mean, I ought to have got over Dad. It’s coming up for two years now.’

  ‘Two years isn’t long, darling. And someone else dying is bound to be a reminder.’

  ‘Well, at least the guy didn’t die.’

  ‘No, fortunately. But accidents like that are always terribly upsetting, and you’re probably still in shock. I think you should take it easy, Kate. Promise me you’ll stay in today and not do anything too arduous.’ Will’s exact words to her. She wished she had his poetic gift, so she could say something profound and inspiring about death. She was stuck with fatuous clichés: time heals, scars fade. Yet Kate seemed to find them comforting.

  ‘Oh, Mum, I’m so glad you’re there. And forgive me going on like this. It must be much worse for you, with the anniversary coming up and everything.’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Really. And you know, having a grandchild to look forward to does help. Of course, it can’t make up for Daddy’s death, but in a way the baby’s part of him – it’s sort of saying, life goes on.’

  Yeah, I see what you mean. But I hope they’re not still expecting you to drop everything and devote your life to the sprog.’

  Catherine flushed. When she’d mentioned Andrew’s proposition, Kate had been outraged at the idea. Even as children, brother and sister had rarely seen eye to eye, and Kate made no bones about her feelings towards Antonia. She affected to despise both marriage and motherhood, though Catherine sometimes wondered if it was simply a facade, hiding loneliness, even jealousy.

  ‘No, they’re going to get a nanny.’ She felt guilty saying it. But apart from her unwillingness to take on bottle-feeds and nappies, she was hardly grandmother material now – not since Friday night. ‘What about you, though? How’s work?’

  ‘Frantic!’ All at once, Kate laughed. ‘Oh, Mum, I must tell you – your Marmite arrived last week. It took nearly four months to get here, would you believe. It’d been opened and stuck up again with government-issue tape. They must have thought it was a suspicious package. Actually, it did look a bit like a bomb. It’s the biggest jar I’ve ever seen. Thanks – it’ll last me ages. I had some this morning for breakfast.’

  ‘So did I, funnily enough. Though perhaps I should say lunch. It was getting on for midday before I surfaced properly. I’m being a real slob today.’

  ‘Yes, why aren’t you at the market? I thought Sunday was your best day?’

  ‘I er, had a bit of a hangover.’

  ‘Mum, you shameless thing! Were you living it up with your gorgeous poet last night?’

  ‘Well, no. Actually, I … I went to a rave.’ What was she saying? The last thing Kate needed on top of a near-fatal accident was an account of her mother’s lunacy. But, somehow, she was pouring it all out – not the lows, the high.

  There was a worrying silence the other end. ‘Kate, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, ‘course.’

  ‘I haven’t shocked you, have I?’

  ‘No. I’m just trying to imagine you at a rave.’

  She flushed. ‘Well, I never intended going, I assure you. I just landed up at this extraordinary club without realizing what I was in for.’

  ‘It’s okay, you don’t have to apologize. Actually, I think you’re rather brave. Most people your age wouldn’t dream of going to a thing like that.’

  ‘No, they’re far too sensible.’

  ‘It’s not being sensible, it’s fear. Fear of new experiences.’

  ‘Well, it was certainly an experience! In fact, I can’t stop thinking about it. It was so intense. And liberating. My worries just seemed to float away, as if I was dancing them out of my mind. And I don’t think it was the drink or drugs, necessarily, more the …’

  ‘Drugs? Christ, Mum, you didn’t take anything, did you?’

  ‘Not really.’ She was blushing like a guilty adolescent. Only a few years ago, she and Gerry had been giving dire parental warnings to Andrew and Kate. Now the roles were reversed. ‘It was just a sort of … aberration. Tomorrow I’ll be back to reality. Whatever reality is. I’m not sure I know any more.’ She broke off. One part of her – the conventional mother – knew she should play down the whole thing, or, better, change the subject. Yet the other, curious, adventurous part yearned to discuss it in engrossing detail. She hadn’t had much chance with Will – he’d been too concerned about the state of her health. ‘It’s funny, Kate, while I was dancing, that seemed more real than anything. And it felt so … so absolutely right. As if that was how we were born to be. Free and loving and open. And sort of connected to everyone else, however different we might all be in ordinary life.’

  ‘Gosh, Mum, you sound just like Paul! It’s a spiritual thing, you see, that feeling of connectedness. Paul’s into Zen, and he used to say you can even feel a bond with sticks and stones and clouds and stuff.’

  ‘Wel
l I envy him, I must say, if he feels that all the time. I’m afraid I came down to earth with a crash and now I’m just thoroughly ashamed.’

  ‘Ashamed? I don’t see why.’

  ‘Well, you obviously disapprove, and …’

  ‘I don’t, Mum. I was just surprised, that’s all. It’s so long since I’ve seen you I’m probably remembering you all wrong.’

  Catherine tried to think back to the person she had been when Kate left for India. Three years ago. Three centuries.

  ‘Anyway, it shows how open-minded you are. It pisses me off when middle-aged people assume they know it all and there’s nothing new to get their heads round. When I was in Goa, there were all these old hippies – older than Dad, some of them – who were still searching for the truth. There was no way they were going to sell out, and I have to say I admired them – envied them too, I suppose. I know Andrew would think they were a load of drug-crazed layabouts, and, okay, they did sit around a lot of the time smoking pot and meditating. But what’s wrong with that? At least they’re trying to work out what we’re here for, which I bet Andrew never does. I got talking to one of them, who was into this thing about how drugs can bring you closer to God. He’d travelled all over the world and lived with primitive tribes who use magic mushrooms or cactus or whatever to get in touch with – oh, I know it sounds a bit naff, but the supernatural, the sacred, all that stuff.’

  ‘Yes, some of the people at the rave were like that. I must admit I thought it was a bit airy-fairy until I experienced it myself. But once I started dancing I felt this sense of – well, communion, I suppose you’d call it. As if we were all part of a religious rite. And it seemed sort of … holy to love the world and everyone in it. There weren’t any of the usual prejudices or divisions. Actually, it was more than dancing – it was like … discovering a truth. It reminded me of that bit in the Bible – perfect love casteth out fear.’