Three Button Trick and Other Stories

by Nicola Barker

  For the next five days her head felt light. Dr Shaben said that it was simply psychological, but she felt the lightness of a person who once had long hair and then cut it short, the roomy strangeness of someone who has had their arm broken and set in plaster and then has the plaster removed so that their arm floats up into the air because it feels so odd and weightless and light.

  At first her face looked swollen and ugly. In hospital she wore no make-up and was blue with bruises. But she could see the difference. In the mirror her nose looked further away. Dr Shaben was pleased for her. He was well satisfied.

  Throughout her stay in hospital, Rose had been in to see her every day. Larry preferred to stay away. Before she had gone in on her first night he had said to her, ‘Remember how when you were small I would sit you on my knee and bounce you up and down and call you my little elephant girl? You always laughed and giggled. It’s not like that any more. Now you’ve grown up into someone I don’t recognize. I can’t approve of what you are doing. God made you as you are. That should be enough.’

  This came as a great shock to Layla. She had completely forgotten Larry’s pet name for her. When she heard him say it again it was like a blow to her face, a blow to her nose, making it ache, making her numb. It was a kind of violent anaesthetic.

  She was being pulled in so many directions. Everyone had a different opinion as to the whys and wherefores. Rose simply said, ‘Do whatever will make you happy.’

  After five days she came home. Although she was still slightly bruised, the mirror was her friend. Her three brothers greeted her at the front door with euphoric whoopings. Larry sat in the living room, watching the cricket. He turned after a minute or so and saw her, standing nervously by the door, her hands touching the bookcase for support. First he smiled, then he laughed, ‘Five days away, all that money spent, and look at you. No difference! You look no different.’ He laughed on long after she had left the room, but when he’d finished his stomach felt bitter.

  Later Marcy visited. She smiled widely and hugged Layla like a real friend. Then she looked closely at her nose and said, ‘Maybe your nose looks slightly different, but to me you are still the same old Layla. In my mind’s eye you are exactly the same person. Nothing has changed.’ She thought that she was saying the right thing.

  Layla sat alone upstairs in her room, staring into the mirror. She felt sure that she looked different. She felt sure that she was now a different person, inside. But the worry now consumed her that other people would not be able to see how different she looked. It felt like a conspiracy. She thought, ‘Maybe I’ve become the ugly person I was outside, inside. Perhaps that can never be changed.’ She felt like Pinocchio.

  That night she had a dream. In her dream she was a tiny little elephant, but she was without a trunk. She had four legs and thick grey skin, but flapping ears and a thin end-tassled tail. But she had no nose. Because she had no nose she couldn’t pick things up—to eat, to wash, to have fun—all these things were now impossible. It was like being without arms. She kept asking for help. Her mother smiled and stroked her, but everyone else just laughed and pointed.

  She slept late. When she awoke she felt battered and exhausted. When she looked into the mirror, her old face looked back at her. Nothing had changed. She felt utterly helpless. Her mind rambled and a thousand different images moved through the space behind her eyes. Her head was full of colour. She saw different people too, pointing their fingers, wiping her nose, holding her arm, bouncing her up and down on their knee, up and down, up and down.

  In the kitchen she looked for a small knife to cut the top off her boiled egg. Instead she found that she had a chopping knife in her hand and it was as long as her arm. She cut the egg in half and its yolk hit the wall. She placed the blade near to her nose and felt tempted to move it closer. She stopped. For hours she remained stationary.

  Larry had forgotten his sandwiches. He drove home in his lunch hour and let himself into the quiet house. He went upstairs for a quick pee. For once he neglected to shut and lock the door. He whistled contentedly.

  Downstairs in the kitchen Layla’s mind started to turn again. She considered her options.

  Inside Information

  MARTHA’S SOCIAL WORKER WAS under the impression that by getting herself pregnant, Martha was looking for an out from a life of crime.

  She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  ‘First thing I ever nicked,’ Martha bragged, when her social worker was initially assigned to her, ‘very first thing I ever stole was a packet of Lil-lets. I told the store detective I took them as a kind of protest. You pay 17 ½ per cent VAT on every single box. Men don’t pay it on razors, you know, which is absolutely bloody typical.’

  ‘But you stole other things, too, on that occasion, Martha.’

  ‘Fags and a bottle of Scotch. So what?’ she grinned. ‘Pay VAT on those too, don’t you?’

  Martha’s embryo was unhappy about its assignment to Martha. Early on, just after conception, it appealed to the higher body responsible for its selection and placement. This caused something of a scandal in the After-Life. The World-Soul was consulted—a democratic body of pin-pricks of light, an enormous institution—which came, unusually enough, to a rapid decision.

  ‘Tell the embryo,’ they said, ‘hard cheese.’

  The embryo’s social worker relayed this information through a system of vibrations—a language which embryos alone in the Living World can produce and receive. Martha felt these conversations only as tiny spasms and contractions.

  Being pregnant was good, Martha decided, because store detectives were much more sympathetic when she got caught. Increasingly, they let her off with a caution after she blamed her bad behaviour on dodgy hormones.

  The embryo’s social worker reasoned with the embryo that all memories of the After-Life and feelings of uncertainty about placement were customarily eradicated during the trauma of birth. This was a useful expedient. ‘Naturally’, he added, ‘the nine-month wait is always difficult, especially if you’ve drawn the short straw in allocation terms, but at least by the time you’ve battled your way through the cervix, you won’t remember a thing.’

  The embryo replied, snappily, that it had never believed in the maxim that Ignorance is Bliss. But the social worker (a corgi in its previous incarnation) restated that the World Soul’s decision was final.

  As a consequence, the embryo decided to take things into its own hands. It would communicate with Martha while it still had the chance and offer her, if not an incentive, at the very least a moral imperative.

  Martha grew larger during a short stint in Wormwood Scrubs. She was seven months gone on her day of release. The embryo was now a well-formed foetus, and, if its penis was any indication, it was a boy. He calculated that he had, all things being well, eight weeks to change the course of Martha’s life.

  You see, the foetus was special. He had an advantage over other, similarly situated, disadvantaged foetuses. This foetus had Inside Information.

  In the After-Life, after his sixth or seventh incarnation, the foetus had worked for a short spate as a troubleshooter for a large pharmaceutical company. During the course of his work and research, he had stumbled across something so enormous, something so terrible about the World-Soul, that he’d been compelled to keep this information to himself, for fear of retribution.

  The rapidity of his assignment as Martha’s future baby was, in part, he was convinced, an indication that the World-Soul was aware of his discoveries. His soul had been snatched and implanted in Martha’s belly before he’d even had a chance to discuss the matter rationally. In the womb, however, the foetus had plenty of time to analyse his predicament. It was a cover-up! He was being gagged, brainwashed and railroaded into another life sentence on earth.

  In prison, Martha had been put on a sensible diet and was unable to partake of the fags and the sherry and the Jaffa cakes which were her normal dietary staples. The foetus took this opportunity to consume as many v
ital calories and nutrients as possible. He grew at a considerable rate, exercised his knees, his feet, his elbows, ballooned out Martha’s belly with nudges and pokes.

  In his seventh month, on their return home, the foetus put his plan into action. He angled himself in Martha’s womb, at just the right angle, and with his foot, gave the area behind Martha’s belly button a hefty kick. On the outside, Martha’s belly was already a considerable size. Her stomach was about as round as it could be, and her navel, which usually stuck inwards, had popped outwards, like a nipple.

  By kicking the inside of her navel at just the correct angle, the foetus—using his Inside Information—had successfully popped open the lid of Martha’s belly button like it was an old-fashioned pill-box.

  Martha noticed that her belly button was ajar while she was taking a shower. She opened its lid and peered inside. She couldn’t have been more surprised. Under her belly button was a small, neat zipper, constructed out of delicate bones. She turned off the shower, grabbed hold of the zipper and pulled it. It unzipped vertically, from the middle of her belly to the top. Inside, she saw her foetus, floating in brine. ‘Hello,’ the foetus said. ‘Could I have a quick word with you, please?’

  ‘This is incredible!’ Martha exclaimed, closing the zipper and opening it again. The foetus put out a restraining hand. ‘If you’d just hang on a minute I could tell you how this was possible …’

  ‘It’s so weird!’ Martha said, closing the zipper and getting dressed.

  Martha went to Tesco’s. She picked up the first three items that came to hand, unzipped her stomach and popped them inside. On her way out, she set off the alarms—the bar-codes activated them, even from deep inside her—but when she was searched and scrutinized and interrogated, no evidence could be found of her hidden booty. Martha told the security staff that she’d consider legal action if they continued to harass her in this way.

  When she got home, Martha unpacked her womb. The foetus, squashed into a corner, squeezed up against a tin of Spam and a packet of sponge fingers, was intensely irritated by what he took to be Martha’s unreasonable behaviour.

  ‘You’re not the only one who has a zip, you know,’ he said. ‘All pregnant women have them; it’s only a question of finding out how to use them, from the outside, gaining the knowledge. But the World-Soul has kept this information hidden since the days of Genesis, when it took Adam’s rib and reworked it into a zip with a pen-knife.’

  ‘Shut it,’ Martha said. ‘I don’t want to hear another peep from you until you’re born.’

  ‘But I’m trusting you,’ the foetus yelled, ‘with this information. It’s my salvation!’

  She zipped up.

  Martha went shopping again. She shopped sloppily at first, indiscriminately, in newsagents, clothes shops, hardware stores, chemists. She picked up what she could and concealed it in her belly.

  The foetus grew disillusioned. He re-opened negotiations with his social worker. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know something about the World-Soul which I’m willing to divulge to my earth-parent Martha if you don’t abort me straight away.’

  ‘You’re too big now,’ the social worker said, fingering his letter of acceptance to the Rotary Club which preambled World-Soul membership. ‘And anyway, it strikes me that Martha isn’t much interested in what you have to say.’

  ‘Do you honestly believe,’ the foetus asked, ‘that any woman on earth in her right mind would consider a natural birth if she knew that she could simply unzip?’

  The social worker replied coldly: ‘Women are not kangaroos, you cheeky little foetus. If the World Soul has chosen to keep the zipper quiet then it will have had the best of reasons for doing so.’

  ‘But if babies were unzipped and taken out when they’re ready’, the foetus continued, ‘then there would be no trauma, no memory loss. Fear of death would be a thing of the past. We could eradicate the misconception of a Vengeful God.’

  ‘And all the world would go to hell,’ the social worker said.

  ‘How can you say that?’

  The foetus waited for a reply, but none came.

  Martha eventually sorted out her priorities. She shopped in Harrods and Selfridges and Liberty’s. She became adept at slotting things of all conceivable shapes and sizes into her belly. Unfortunately, the foetus himself was growing quite large. After being unable to fit in a spice rack, Martha unzipped and addressed him directly. ‘Is there any possibility,’ she asked, ‘that I might be able to take you out prematurely so that there’d be more room in there?’

  The foetus stared back smugly. ‘I’ll come out,’ he said firmly, ‘when I’m good and ready’

  Before she could zip up, he added, ‘And when I do come out, I’m going to give you the longest and most painful labour in Real-Life history. I’m going to come out sideways, doing the can-can.’

  Martha’s hand paused, momentarily, above the zipper. ‘Promise to come out very quickly,’ she said, ‘and I’ll nick you some baby clothes.’

  The foetus snorted in a derisory fashion. ‘Revolutionaries,’ he said, ‘don’t wear baby clothes. Steal me a gun, though, and I’ll fire it through your spleen.’

  Martha zipped up quickly, shocked at this vindictive little bundle of vituperation she was unfortunate enough to be carrying. She smoked an entire packet of Marlboro in one sitting, and smirked, when she unzipped, just slightly, at the coughing which emerged.

  The foetus decided that he had no option but to rely on his own natural wit and guile to foil both his mother and the forces of the After-Life. He began to secrete various items that Martha stole in private little nooks and crannies about her anatomy.

  On the last night of his thirty-sixth week, he put his plan into action. In his arsenal: an indelible pen, a potato, a large piece of cotton from the hem of a dress, a thin piece of wire from the supports of a bra, all craftily reassembled. In the dead of night, while Martha was snoring, he gradually worked the zip open from the inside, and did what he had to do.

  The following morning, blissfully unaware of the previous night’s activities, Martha went out shopping to Marks and Spencer’s. She picked up some Belgian chocolates and a bottle of port, took hold of her zipper and tried to open her belly. It wouldn’t open. The zipper seemed smaller and more difficult to hold.

  ‘That bastard’, she muttered, ‘must be jamming it up from the inside.’ She put down her booty and headed for the exit. On her way out of the shop, she set off the alarms.

  ‘For Chrissakes!’ she told the detective, ‘I’ve got nothing on me!’ And for once, she meant it.

  Back home, Martha attacked her belly with a pair of nail scissors. But the zip wasn’t merely jammed, it was meshing and merging and disappearing, fading like the tail end of a bruise. She was frazzled. She looked around for her cigarettes. She found her packet and opened it. The last couple had gone, and instead, inside, was a note.

  Martha, [the note said] I have made good my escape, fully intact. I sewed a pillow into your belly. On the wall of your womb I’ve etched and inked an indelible bar-code. Thanks for the fags.

  Love, Baby.

  ‘But you can’t do that!’ Martha yelled. ‘You don’t have the technology!’ She thought she heard a chuckle, behind her. She span around. On the floor, under the table, she saw a small lump of afterbirth, tied up into a neat parcel by an umbilical cord. She could smell a whiff of cigarette smoke. She thought she heard laughter, outside the door, down the hall. She listened intently, but heard nothing more.

  The Butcher’s Apprentice

  IF HE HAD COME from a family of butchers maybe his perspective would have been different. He would have been more experienced, hardened, less naïve. His mum had wanted him to work for Marks and Spencers or for British Rail. She said, ‘Why do you want to work in all that blood and mess? There’s something almost obscene about butchery.’

  His dad was more phlegmatic. ‘It’s not like cutting the Sunday roast, Owen, it’s guts and gore and entrails. Just the same,
it’s a real trade, a proper trade.’

  Owen had thought it all through. At school one of his teachers had called him ‘deep.’ She had said to his mother on Parents’ Evening, ‘Owen seems deep, but it’s hard to get any sort of real response from him. Maybe it’s just cosmetic.’

  His mum had listened to the first statement but had then become preoccupied with a blister on the heel of her right foot. Consequently her grasp of the teacher’s wisdom had been somewhat undermined. When she finally got home that evening, her stomach brimming with sloshy coffee from the school canteen, she had said to Owen, ‘Everyone says that you’re too quiet at school, but your maths teacher thinks that you’re deep. She has modern ideas, that one.’ Owen had appreciated this compliment. It made him try harder at maths that final term before his exams, and leaving. At sixteen he had pass marks in mathematics, home economics and the whole world before him.

  In the Careers Office his advisor had given him a leaflet about prospective employment opportunities to fill out. He ticked various boxes. He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with your hands?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with animals?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like using your imagination?’

  When his careers guidance officer had analysed his preferences she declared that his options were quite limited. He seemed such a quiet boy to her, rather dour. She said, ‘Maybe you could be a postman. Postmen see a lot of animals during their rounds and use their hands to deliver letters.’ Owen appeared unimpressed. He stared down at his hands as though they had suddenly become a cause for embarrassment. So she continued, ‘Maybe you could think about working with food. How about training to be a chef or a butcher? Butchers work with animals. You have to use your imagination to make the right cut into a carcass.’ Because he had been in the careers office for well over half an hour, Owen began to feel obliged to make some sort of positive response. A contribution. So he looked up at her and said, ‘Yeah, I suppose I could give it a try.’ He didn’t want to appear stroppy or ungrateful. She smiled at him and gave him an address. The address was for J. Reilly and Sons, Quality Butchers, 103 Oldham Road.