Gwyneth Jones - Life(2005)

by Anonymous Author

  She didn't ever phone him; or he her. Tones of voice could put you off; she wanted words she could think about. She wanted lines, so she could read between them. She wrapped herself in a shawl that had escaped the cat-vomit and sat at her computer. Yes, there was a message, a beautiful tingling message.

  Oh dear, she thought, planning ahead, in spite of herself. He'll never leave Anna. But the thrill of having a romance. . .it was her only consolation.

  * * *

  Another year had begun, in wind and storm. Anna lit a candle at bedtime, for the coziness of it, and cuddled up with Jake under his duvet. Ah, how time flies. She was reading him The Lord of the Rings, what happened to Spot and Pookie and The Very Hungry Caterpillar? "Why is Saruman the head of the White Council?" asked the child. "I mean Gandalf's got the ring of fire, which is the top elven ring, and he's a main character. Saruman is so nasty and selfish, why did they have him?"

  "Well, Gandalf was Galadriel's candidate. I expect that didn't help. The White Council is a humans' thing, even if it's made up of wizards. Tolkien never says so, but I would bet that's how it happened. The humans wanted someone who would push their point of view, which meant Saruman although everyone knew he was a jerk and probably on the take. Does that make sense?"

  "Sort of. Not really."

  "Yeah, well, that's office power struggles for you. Shall I go on?"

  Snowstorms on January the twelfth: there was no need to come back to report that. . . There were shadows looking over the hedge into Anna's garden. Sometimes, in stolen moments of domestic art, she would raise her head from the treasured task (chopping vegetables, polishing furniture, sewing buttons on Jake's clothes) and find herself listening, with her heart in her mouth. For what ogre's footfall?

  I will make it all right. Afterwards. First I have to take the ring to the fire.

  * * *

  She tried hard, and mainly succeeded, not to think about the human implications of Transferred Y, and in this Nirmal was her perfect ally. Human sexual identity? Leave that for the psychologists. If you find out anything about human sexual identity from infertility genetics, it's that there is no straightforward match between variations in chromosomal sex and the behavior of the individual. Such a stupid thing to fight about. Wasn't there enough trouble in the world? If you followed the news, if you ever looked up from the unbelievable grind of work and caught a glimpse of the grim salvation that might be hurrying to the rescue of Clare's precious living world, you had to recoil in horror. Not that! There's got to be another way! Is there another way? Will anything break us out of this dreadful fall?

  She did not want to think about the meaning of what she was doing, but she had recurrent nightmares of looking down into a dark mirror, as if into the reflecting lens of a telescope. In the dark something appeared and grew: beautiful and terrible, a devouring vortex. All human life ends in there.

  And so it went on: Spence prevaricating, Meret like a child at a sweetshop window, Anna racing against time. For the first time in her life she knew what it was like to live like an ambitious scientist: scouring the journals, jumping at shadows, convinced that there were competitors leaping on her trail. Any moment, any day, some other team might snatch her victory. . . It was poisonous, but it was exhilarating.

  She didn't talk to Spence about Transferred Y because the thing was sub judice. None of the team talked about it. There came a point when they knew they had information (the survey) that was dynamite, but they never discussed the outside-world implications. They were in the home stretch, nothing else mattered.

  In January she found out that one of the Australians had privately warned Nirmal that Anna was going too far. How come this man had had access to the unpublished material? The time for secrecy was almost past, but even so! She came near to having a fight with the boss about it. This is my department, said Nirmal. The work we have done will appear with my name on it. But if you wish to continue, in spite of this advice, I will support you. Anna was oblivious. She put the incident down to stage fright. The paper had been accepted. How could they withdraw it? Why would they? Then the paper was published, and immediately the storm broke.

  One day in early spring, Nirmal called her to his office. She went along unsuspecting. The tabloid journalism was a joke, and the actual scientists who had leapt to the attack were the usual suspects, nothing credible. She thought that Nirmal had called her in to discuss tactics. Instead he showed her a private email, from the team leader in Melbourne, casting doubt on the existence of the male XX effect, suggesting it was an experimental artifact. Anna laughed. She should not have laughed. The interview went into a destructive spiral, while Anna sat reading the printed email upside down and remembering too late that behind the Melbourne team lay their guru, a certain senior geneticist called Dr Pat McCreevy, Nirmal's lifelong rival. Oh, the pure realms of scientific endeavor are riddled with these enmities, and you're a fool if you don't take them seriously. Oh shit. . . To be called into question by Pat McCreevy was guaranteed to make Nirmal irrational.

  She heard herself say all the wrong things. What does it matter? The so-called "male" human chromosome changes shape, so what? This is about something far more important! She did not accuse her boss of absurd sexual panic, but when he told her that there is nothing more important than human dignity, she did not agree. When he said he now believed their announcement had been premature and must be withdrawn, she objected furiously, and so—

  It was the school half term. She came home in the middle of the day and was hurt to find the house empty. But Spence didn't know there was a problem. She'd told him long ago there would be controversy, how could he know anything worse had happened? She went round to the Rectory. Spence and Meret had left the children with Meret's mother and gone out together. They came back to find Anna waiting for them with a face like death and thunder. "Hi," she said to her husband—and dimly, dimly, it crossed her mind that it was strange they'd left the children behind. "Hello Meret," she added politely. . . "I've been fired."

  iv

  Once Ramone came down to the south coast conurbation for a gig and pulled out at the last moment, because she was sick of the game, these "lectures" that were really fucking Tupperware parties for the product. She walked around the streets that had been familiar long ago, saw a woman with a child, and followed them. It was dusk, the moon riding high in a clear abyss of blue. The trees in the park were leafless; it was winter. The woman was wearing a slim black coat to her ankles and a close-fitting cap. The child was in a dark red duffle coat with a brightly colored muffler. It trotted to keep up, holding tightly to Mummy's hand. . . Ramone seriously considered becoming a stalker. She would move to Bournemouth secretly and follow this contented young mother about, up and down the promenade, in and out of the funky shops, around the parks and gardens. She decided later that it couldn't have been Anna.

  That night she went back to London, to her rooms high above the canyons of the City. Her living space still had the air of a student bedsit: a haphazard, temporary, and uncared for setting, in which only the heaps and piles of books possessed any validity. She spoke tenderly to the onlie begetter of her affections, Pele the blue rabbit. You are all I have and all I need, little one. The rest of them, those others with their families and friends and lovers, are deceiving themselves with pitiful illusion. I'm better off. You will never let me down. I call you Pele because that was what you were called when I was a baby. But don't worry my dearest, my sweetheart. I know your real name. Actually, it embarrassed her to look at Pele, or speak to him as if aloud. Like all true lovers, he was a creature for smelling and touching. When she slept, with her darling nuzzled in her arms, then she was truly happy.

  She faithfully visited Lavinia in the nursing home. On the good days she found Lavvy bright-eyed and young looking, her hair brushed and styled to the taste of the nursing staff, and spent ten minutes or so chatting to a timid, affable elderly lady who knew Ramone well but hadn't a clue who she was. Ramone could relate to that. Sh
e frequently found herself in a similar situation: only when she had to talk to people who expected her to recognize them, she wasn't half so nice about it. But Lavvy had no choice. On the bad days, Lavinia remembered enough to know what was happening, and that was terrible.

  When she decided to move to Manhattan, she knew it wouldn't make any difference. Lavvy wouldn't notice if Ramone's visits were six months apart. Her clock had stopped; her watch on time had bust a spring. Maybe she knew something, because on the visit that Ramone intended to be her last, Lavvy (in affable old lady mode) suddenly asked if she could have something to hold. Always before, in response to Ramone's ritual question Is there anything I can bring for you? she had answered blankly, no. She did not want anything to read; she did not want flowers or pictures or smuggled forbidden drugs. She wanted for nothing. Ramone had struggled with herself, but won the victory and went back the next day with Pele. He was welcomed with puzzled approval. (Lavinia of course didn't remember that she had asked for something to cuddle, but the need was still there.)

  Afterwards, when they asked her why she had left England, and why she was no longer available for raucous feminist comment, she gave them the kind of answer they expected. Professional feminists are snouts in the trough, arselickers to the male media, and their fans are a bunch of closet-genderist lesbians, bitter housewives, and fat people. Feminism stinks, I've said it before and I'll say it again. There's nothing anyone can do for women; they deserve all they get. This was entertaining copy, though not new. The truth had more to do with the fate of that blue toy rabbit, whose absence nothing could mend. In her heart, she was not living in Manhattan. She was not "involved" with the postmodern idiocy of Karel and Ri, or the least interested in the crappy "art" the three of them produced together. She was in phase transition, waiting for the day when her life would be restored to her.

  Waiting to move on.

  She found out about Lavvy's final illness from Roland. Lavvy's brother called her up to tell her his sister had contracted viral pneumonia, and the prognosis was not good. "She seems to have lost the will to live," he said, with false gravity. Ramone knew that this was code for euthanasia. Shocked energy raced through her limbs. She would return to England at once. With positive nursing Lavvy could come back from this. She was only, what was it, sixty-five? Not old! She could live long enough to be there when mind power could be restored to Alzheimer's sufferers, even the ones like Lavvy, with complications—

  "I'm coming back. Tell her I'm on my way. Tell her, no matter if you think she doesn't know my name." Already she'd decided to phone the nursing home and get them to relay her voice to Lavvy's sickbed. It could easily be done, and she did not trust Roland.

  There was a long pause at the other end of the connection.

  "Umm. I was trying to break it to you gently, Ramone. I'm afraid she's gone."

  "Fuck. YOU BASTARD! YOU KILLED HER! You HAD HER PUT DOWN!"

  "The funeral is next Wednesday—"

  "YOU TOLD THEM WHAT TO DO. YOU SAID LET HER DIE!"

  "Actually," said the pained middle-class voice, intolerably pleased with itself. "Those were my sister's very words. Let me die. She had made a deposition to that effect, a living will. Didn't you know?"

  When she went to the funeral, rage and hatred were still her principal emotions. She didn't want to admit that she had known this was coming when Lavvy, who was never queer for soft toys, had asked for Pele. . . It wasn't the first time she'd seen a friend cremated, so she wasn't much bothered by the ceremony. In the middle of it, she remembered with horror that her darling had not been recovered—

  She rushed out of the chapel, or whatever they called it, and took a taxi fifteen miles to the nursing home. It was November: the straight, slim Dorset beeches in the grounds were laden with red gold. She had dressed in New York Bohemian chic, to annoy the family. The nursing home staff reacted with fear and revulsion to her makeup, her hat, and her shoes. They closed ranks. They said that Lavvy's effects had been removed by her relations. If Ramone wanted a memento, she should ask the Kents. When Ramone broke down in tears, they softened but insisted there was nothing they could do. Anything the family had left behind had gone to be incinerated days ago. She pushed them aside and ran, a mad woman dressed like a scary clown, past the tv lounge and the ranks of folded wheelchairs, to the room that she remembered. It was empty. It had never been other than empty. Lavinia had never lived here.

  At the open window, polyester net curtains flapped. The fresh air didn't hide that grey disgusting nursing home miasma: piss and feces, stale food and disinfectant.

  She walked out of the building sobbing without restraint. She had nothing to gain by keeping a straight face, so why not howl. . . At the bend in the drive, something halted her. It was like a voice, calling very softly. It was like the smell of damp leaf mould, in the dark under-growth of the Embankment Gardens. Instead of going straight ahead to the gates, she turned to the left along a moist, rutted track between banks of rhododendrons. There it was: the rubbish corral, a big shoveled-out space cut into the shrubbery, stacked with bulging black bin bags. Oh my God, whispered Ramone, without the slightest doubt. A beautiful, grey-haired lady in a vivid pomegranate dress, walking away from Ramone, had turned and looked back. . . She fell on the first bag in the front row; then the next; scrabbling among all kinds of litter, soiled dressings, reeking incontinence pads, things that definitely shouldn't be left to fester like this. I'll get the place closed down, she thought vindictively. . .and saw the tip of a faded blue ear.

  She had found Pele.

  He stank. He would have to be washed. Otherwise he was fine.

  Oh, miracle. Oh dear god who makes mistakes, thank you for this.

  It had begun to rain, but she was too shaken to leave, and in any case she felt at home in this place. She spread one of the cleaner bags to sit on and used another—draped over two branches—to make a roof. Anyone who saw her now would know she was completely mad. Roland would be happy. Ramone didn't give a shit for their definitions. She had been saved by Lawy long ago, from the terrible trap of other people. She had been taught to live. No one could catch Ramone; she slipped through all their nets: not the feminists, not the intellectual bullshitters, not the spirituality groupies, not the sex-gang children of Bohemia. They were all the same, all conforming to some lying code they were afraid to defy. No one could tell her any different; she knew that she had hold of the important thing, here in her arms. In her own way, which was like no one else's way. Something to love.

  The Entralnment

  i

  The journey must end. She must leave the toll system; she must drop into the familiar evasion pattern to deal with Bournemouth's aversion-therapy traffic control. Why did she feel such a sinking in her heart? She had never felt so bad about coming home before: not even when returning to Leeds, across the Pennines, meant returning from the haven of her work fo the house that held only Lily Rose's death. Why feel so bad? The disaster had happened, the struggle was over, all she had to do was adapt. To be happy with Spence and the child. How could she ask for more, remembering the icy sleets of March, than this—

  It was Spence who spotted the paparazzi.

  "Fuck!"

  "Holy shit," breathed Anna.

  The road beyond their house was blocked by cars. Dark figures were leaping out of them at Anna's approach, a premature camera flash sprang white above the glare of headlights. She braked hard and in a panic began to swing the wheel, flinging her head to see behind her. But they were being closely followed. No escape that way.

  "You both said naughty words—" began Jake. But then he started to cry.

  The newshounds were banging on the windows, pressing their lenses against the glass.

  "Get out of the car," said Spence. "I'll park it. Be cool, smile. Get Jake indoors."

  Anna and Jake scrambled out into the barrage. Mrs Senoz, Ms Senoz! Dr Senoz! Have you anything, could you just, what do you, Hey, Hey, Anna! Look this way! She put her arm aro
und Jake and smiled, but then ran stooping as if through a storm of hail, up the steps, unlocked the house door, and slammed it behind them. The narrow hall felt cold as a cave. And it was here. The dread was here, indoors, not out there with the hellhounds. She stood, shocked and puzzled, trying to get the measure of this feeling, this cold waft of fear that had invaded her safe den. . .

  "Can I tell you about my goal again," said Jake, wiping his eyes.

  "Yeah, do."

  "The one I got that was declared offside. . . I headed it in from the edge of the box, off a free kick from Matthew—"

  "But it was offside, you know," said Anna, who'd been there. Once she'd found out that Charles never came to football, she had made it a priority to support the babes, last season. "You weren't offside, but Henry was. I saw him. It was rotten luck."

  "It was still my goal, though. I hardly ever get a chance to score. But Andy says my tackling's very good. Did you know, Andy once trained with Alan Shearer, when he was my age?"

  "Yeah, I did know. He won it in a competition in Match. He told me. Amazing luck."

  She went into the ground floor study, where the piano lived, with their bicycles. Is it here? There were hounds scrambling over the front garden. They stared in at her, faces bloated with sexual rage. She wasn't making it up. There was nothing more blatant than the sex in bastards' furious hatred. She closed the curtains.

  "Why are they so horrible?" asked Jake, who had followed her.

  "Because they are sad bastards. I'm sorry, I said a naughty word. Can't help it."

  "I don't mind."