She could read no more. The thin, spiky handwriting blurred and swam—
"What is it?"
"I've got my job back. I think."
"Tell them where they can stuff it," said Ramone trenchantly, dumping two French coffee bowls on the perspex table. "There's fuck-all to eat, so I hope you're not hungry. Hey, Anna? Anna?"
Anna Anaconda was crying like a baby, crying the way a baby cries when fear has passed, without restraint, rocking herself with her arms wrapped around her knees.
"I thought nobody loved me," she sobbed, "I thought nobody loved me!"
* * *
Hello? Hi
Hi
Anna! Where are you?
I'm still in New York
How are you? Where've you been? Have you seen the news about TY?
I'm okay. I think I've about reached the point where Slothrop turns into a tree or dissipates into ihe Zeitgeist or whatever he does.
Please don't turn into a tree, Anna.
As soon as she heard his voice, all the heavy things she'd thought, she wanted to say to Spence, all the lines she had honed for her day in court, vanished into nothingness.
"I came looking for Ramone, but she wasn't here. Then I bumped into your mother and went to stay with her, up state. Did she tell you?"
"She didn't, she was verv righteous about, not telling me, but I guessed. Did you get Nirmal's letter? I didn't send anything else, but he was anxious for you to have it."
"Yeah. I got it. Ramone was here when I got back to the city."
"Oh. right. How's Ramone?"
"Same as ever. How's Meret?"
A short, silence, and then they both laughed.
"We haven't, seen much of the Crafts. They've been in Portugal, setting up Meret's parents in their new digs. They're putting The Rectory up for sale. Charles wants a bigger place, with some land. He's looking at Suffolk, or maybe further north."
Charles. My man!
And I'm sorry, red-headed babe. But it was you or me.
Anna leaned her cheek against the inside of the callpoint hood, thinking of Nirmal's letter. It was good to know, from the date on it, that his change of heart seemed to have predated the upswing in TY's fortunes. Not that this upswing was unqualified good news, because she knew what would happen. All the story would be about the sex; no one was going to pay attention to Anna's vector of entrainment. Even within her own community, she'd have to fight like crazy to get the basic science back into the picture, and she would probably fail. . . If there were any future in basic science, anyway, she thought gloomily, here on the brink of the Dark Ages. But that letter. . . She would value that letter as highly as she liked. Nirmal didn't have to give her back her honor, no matter how right she was. Plenty of precedents for him, if he'd refused. But he had done it of his own free will; he had led her back into the sanctuary—
"Anna, are you still there?"
"I'm at the airport. I'll call you again when I know my flight."
The car was packed, the sky was blue. Fergie the hamster had gone to stay with Henry, the Under Tens mid-fielder. The dead and golden month of August had come around again. Time to escape from the uncertainties, the shortages and failures, of modern urban life. Live in a tent, be elective refugees, and stop worrying.
Anna double-locked the front door and stood for a moment, as if listening.
This house. . .
Her reinstatement at the Genetics Department might prove meaningless, if the University's financial position was as catastrophic as rumor had it. Most likely it wouldn't turn out so bad. As Ramone said: civilization would go limping on for a while. But every time, when setting out like this, she had found herself wondering. . . Were she and Spence intuitively practicing, for an inevitable future that was getting very close? Maybe it really was Transferred Y that was carrying things over the brink, bringing a terrible salvation for the living world that had been under such threat from the awesome burden of human wealth and happiness.
Maybe, maybe not.
Think about it later.
Lock the door and drive away.
Life: An Explanation
I was born in North East Manchester, a landscape of narrow valleys, many streams, willows and poplars—overlaid with a thick crust of houses, mills and factories; most of the wheels already stilled before my time. In the house where I was born there was a window in the bedroom I shared with my younger sister, where I could hide behind the curtain and see a shadow girl on the other side of the glass, wild and free. I've written about my childhood, and how I think it relates to my writing, you can find the essay here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gwynethann/SFEYE.htm. When I was grown I went to a south coast University, where I did not have a brilliant career (I didn't do a stroke of work); but I dreamed my dreams and read some very interesting books. Later I lived in Singapore and became a passionate admirer of the culture of that whole region. The Jakarta Regime was subjugating East Timor, and I met Indonesians who tried to tell me how bad it was, but I was too ignorant to understand. That's when the battle of the sexes, in all its cruel consequences and seductive appeal, began to be an obsession. I've written about that, too: http: //homepage.ntlworld.com/gwynethann/OSLO.htm.
Back in England, living in frugal content, combining motherhood and "career" (of sorts), exploring France and Italy on a shoestring every summer; for years I never had any private money in my pocket: I was making less than a science post-grad. But I couldn't give up tussling with the questions that seem to me so important. How can something as fragile and unstable as human sexual difference as it really is, be the cause of so much suffering: the foundation of so many books of merciless law? How can this problem ever be solved? What would the solution cost?
The story of Anna Senoz is not my life story (the scruffy and pugnacious Ramone, Anna's shadow-girl, is more like me, if I could imagine myself a feminist media-star). But in ways it's the story of my life as a writer: the experiences that shaped me, the changes that swept over my world, the ideas that made me write the novels I've written, the people who have inspired me; the future I imagine.
* * *
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Gwyneth Jones - Life(2005) Page 41
