With Your Crooked Heart

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she asks. ‘You fucking lunatic.’

  ‘You knew it was me,’ he says.

  ‘You could have been anyone.’

  ‘You knew it was me. You know you did.’

  ‘Well,’ says Louise, ‘that’s enough. It’s time I got home.’

  ‘I know a better place,’ says Johnnie.

  In the depth of the park, in the dry shadow of a holm oak, she kneels on the ground. It is scratchy with forgotten leaves. Away from the streets the night is thick as velvet, pawing at her eyes, but not quite dark. There’ll be other people here. There always are. They know the gap in the railings where they were forced apart with a crowbar once, and never forced back together again. You speak softly here or not at all, because you don’t know who might be listening. And on the benches there are the stiff, bombed-out shapes of men. They could be dead for all the listening they do. Prime targets, prey for anyone who wants to know how it feels to connect a steel-tipped boot with a sleeping face. They live here.

  But in the shadow of the holm oak Louise kneels up, her skin prickling.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asks sharply, reaching after her.

  ‘Wait.’

  She sheds her clothes. Trench-coat, black silk dress. She leans forward and unhooks her bra and her breasts swing free. She pulls down knickers, tights, and piles them out of the way. Can he see her? He can. There’s no real dark in cities.

  ‘You do it too,’ she says.

  ‘You want to get us arrested?’

  ‘Go on.’

  Johnnie hesitates, on the brink of the cold water where she is already far out.

  ‘OK,’ he says.

  He takes off his clothes more slowly than her, folding each item with care.

  ‘What do you want?’ he says.

  ‘Nothing.’

  He does the strangest thing. He takes her face between his hands and holds it still, peering. There’s enough leakage of city light for them to see one another’s staring eyes.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ she asks.

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘We can’t lie down on this lot. There might have been dogs.’

  He pulls her to him. Like a four-legged animal they stagger until they’re standing and she’s got her back to the tree trunk. The soles of her feet grip roots and earth. Suddenly there’s a noise, not far off. Someone laughing. And again, the pulse of a laugh, too close, low in somebody’s throat. Not a nice laugh. And the thin whine of a dog. Sometimes they have parties in the park here, the crusties. They set fire to a tramp once, a real tramp, one of the old-style ones who’ve been around since before Louise was born.

  Johnnie puts his mouth to hers and whispers, ‘Ssh.’ But she doesn’t need telling. Her body presses back into the bark as if she’s one of these girls in stories, who turn into trees when there’s nowhere else left for them to go. She feels the roughness of it against her buttocks and the pads of her shoulders. She wills herself to vanishing point, and her heart thumps, even though no one’s chasing her any more.

  A can clatters, but not so close now. Safer. But there’s the dog. Dogs can sniff out people. For a dog, this park is floodlit by the smell of her naked, him naked. A dog doesn’t need to see. It has a map of scent spread out for it. She sees the wet, probing snout of the dog, coming close and finding them where they think they are hidden. But Johnnie’s hands are lifting her, parting her legs. Between the harshness of the tree and the rough, hurried fuck she disappears, goes off elsewhere. While she pants in his ear she is miles off, looking down on the black spread of the holm oak and the little point of fire the crusties have lit. Their thin-flanked dogs snap at her.

  She feels him shudder with it, the effort of holding up her weight, and keeping her spread. And maybe some pleasure, she thinks, after so much effort, as his head snaps back. For once he’s not watching, not looking out, not on top of anything. It’s her looking out, not him, her making out the shadows of dogs and men, separating them from the larger shadow that is the enfolding night. Then silence, and the rain coming down harder now, hissing on the tough evergreen leaves as if it means to get in and drown them.

  And then she says, ‘I’d better get home. You going to come back with me? Paul’ll wonder if you don’t’.

  This is the night Anna is conceived, in the tenth year of Paul and Louise’s marriage. Louise is thirty-one. They’ve been childless so long.

  ‘It must have been a shock,’ people say to Louise. ‘You can’t have been expecting it after all that time.’

  She smiles. But really she knew right away, right that second in the wet park. She knew it was what she was there for. She washed herself carefully when she got home, dreamily, wiping her thighs with a big, dripping sponge. She locked herself into the bathroom and stared at the body she’d taken for granted since she was thirteen, and knew that was it, she’d seen the last of it, it was gone. That was gone, and most of her life was gone with it. She heard Paul’s keys chink on the bedside table. Already, she knew that the conception was spreading inside her like a bruise, like knowledge, changing everything it touched.

  Three

  There is a brass plate on the door, with his name and qualifications burnished. Louise can see herself in it much too clearly. The heaviness of her face, her pouched eyes. Below, the shape of her body dwindles, distorted by the slight curve of the plate. Or so she hopes. Her image looks at her angrily, as if it blames her for what it has become. We used to like each other, you and me. Look at what you’ve done to us.

  Louise puts up her hand to her cheek, as if she’s been slapped. The shadow Louise does the same, and looks back at her with wide, frightened eyes. Baby eyes in the face of a pig, she thinks savagely. Here we are, says her reflection. What are you going to do about it? Louise braces herself. She’s not finished yet. She won’t give in. Ten years ago, when she went to restaurants with Paul and Johnnie, the waiters pulled out her chair, settled her lingeringly, stroked her coat on to the hanger. And she sat with her head high and her back straight and sent a slow smile to the two men who sat with her. Before Anna was born. Now she goes alone, rarely, on days when she’s looked out of the window and seen that the dark’s come, and there’s no food in the house. She’s often muddled about the time. Sometimes she is sure she’s booked a table, but she can’t quite remember. They frown and tell her they are sorry, there isn’t a table booked in her name. And the other people look up from their dinner for a moment, their faces like cats’ faces, sleekly in place. Sometimes the big men who stand at the doors of bars put their arms out, firmly and finally, and say, ‘Not you.’

  Louise braces herself. She gives herself the same dry, maternal smile she gives to Johnnie when he needs reassurance. Already it is becoming clear to her that all this is a mistake, but she’s going to go through with it. The surgeon was recommended to her. She has made the preliminary visits, had all the tests. She thinks of Anna, safe at school, and touches the discreet brass bell that makes no sound when it is pressed.

  The man on the other side of the desk puts his hands together in a steeple, and looks at her. Mrs O’Driscoll. Louise O’Driscoll. She doesn’t look Irish, but then she will have given her married name. She might be middle European — Romanian, or even Russian, with those high, broad cheekbones. The voice is London, and the address as well. He notes the postcode with annoyance. He could not afford to live there himself, not yet. He piques himself on being able to put a background to every face, but in her case, he suspects, it’s mosdy foreground.

  ‘Liposuction isn’t always the answer, Mrs O’Driscoll,’ he says. He holds her eyes for the flash of a moment. Not too long, you’ve always got to be careful. He changes tack slightly, in case he’s underestimated her. ‘In some cases, it’s not the most appropriate therapy.’

  ‘But you’re an expert,’ she says. ‘I’ve been recommended to you. That’s why I’ve come.’

  ‘Yes, and as you know, Mrs O’Driscoll, we follow a very ca
reful procedure here, to make sure that each patient understands exactly what they are undertaking, and what they can expect. This type of surgery is a highly individual matter. I am speaking to you now on the basis of the extensive tests and interviews which you have already undergone.’

  She blinks. Not nervously, but slowly, the way a cat blinks. He notices the tiny clot of mascara in the corner of her eyes. Her eyes are rimmed with kohl, and the mascara is too heavy.

  ‘I know it doesn’t always work,’ she says. ‘I know you can’t give me any guarantees.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘No, we can’t. But that isn’t exactly what I’m trying to say to you. You see, I cannot undertake this course of treatment unless I have reasonable confidence in the outcome. And in your case, I’m afraid…’

  He pauses, looks at her again over the steeple of his fingers, then picks up a pen as if he’s about to write her dismissal. He wonders briefly why so many women keep on wearing the make-up that suited them when they were eighteen. As if catching his thought, she flushes as people do at a remembered sexual humiliation. Then she recovers herself, pulls her shoulders back and stares at him. Three stone overweight, at least. There’s fat on her upper arms, pads of fat on her shoulders, abdomen, thighs. He’s a connoisseur of fat, and he knows that her kind is hard to shift. She’s waiting for him to whisk it away in her sleep, and leave her with the lithe, smooth body she remembers she once had. And perhaps she did. But he’s going to have to tell her that her fat is hers and she owns it, to keep or to lose. He’s done it often enough, placing truth delicately between the tongs of medical terminology, speaking of anaesthetic risks or respiratory problems, of the desirability of a three-month detoxification process, prior to surgery.

  But all that won’t do for this one. She’s too much of a risk. He assesses the puffiness of her face, the webbing of tiny burst blood vessels under the coat of foundation and powder. Her blood pressure is high, and she is slightly asthmatic. There are contra-indications to general anaesthesia.

  ‘We are talking about a major procedure here,’ he says. She stares at him. ‘It’s complex, and it’s invasive. It’s not right for everyone.’ He remembers the skin on her naked body, when she slipped off the white cotton gown. She was webbed with stretchmarks.

  ‘I know,’ says Mrs O’Driscoll. ‘I’ve watched your video.’

  You don’t know anything, he thinks. The video is about flowers, white masks with concerned eyes peering over them, gleaming nurses, changed lives, proud husbands. It has something to do with what he does, but not too much. He made the video on the advice of his PR consultants, but he’s beginning to dunk it wasn’t such a good idea. It undermines what he thinks of as the heart of his business, this one-to-one talk in the confessional of his consulting room. The decisions are made here, and he makes them.

  ‘I do know,’ she repeats.

  You know nothing, he thinks to himself, keeping his eyes lowered. He knows. He knows the noise lungs make when air’s pushed through them down a tube in the paralysed throat. He knows about fat beaten from solid to liquid until it can be sluiced away. He’s heard every fart and wheeze that stunned flesh can make. He knows about faces scrubbed clear of charm and make-up, baggy under the hot lights of the operating theatre. He knows the yellowness of subcutaneous fat, and the bright blood that guards it. He’s a surgeon at heart.

  They want to yield to him. They’re so tired of failure, and he can take it all away. Some of them want to know every detail of what happens, and he goes through it with them gently, outlining the risks without dwelling on them. They are set on what he can give them. He can make them back into what they believe they were. Through hurting them, he can take away the pain. He thinks about it a lot. People say doctors have no imagination, but sometimes he lies awake at night, beside his quietly breathing wife, and thinks of them all out there, waking or sleeping, shifting their bruised bodies under the sheets and thinking of what he has done for them. Those who trust him most heal the best.

  He glances down at the file in front of him. Plenty of money here. She didn’t even ask the cost of a course of treatment. His fees are competitive, his operation small, but sleek. His results are about what they ought to be, and his methods are entirely professional. These women require a service, and he provides it. He doesn’t judge. Once you start going into ethics, what’s so ethical about a woman left on her own at forty-five because her husband wants taut skin and a body that looks good beside his? No one tries to put a stop to that, he thinks, and the thought brings with it a familiar, warm wash of self-righteousness.

  The air-conditioning hums, and he looks up at Mrs O’Driscoll again. No question of this one having to re-mortgage the house, or take out a bank loan. He knows them all: the inheritors, the actors, the wives of waning football stars, the high-flyers whose faces are falling. When he sees a sleek girl on the street, and gets the haughty stare of her sexual omnipotence, he has his revenge. He maps the way her wrinkles will divide her face into a thousand postcodes. He knows where thread veins will stitch blue knots under the milky skin of her thighs. He is a connoisseur of flesh which has yet to grow, the jowly shadows that will capture her pure profile.

  His fingertips know everything there is to be known about female flesh. He can judge the elasticity of skin blindfold, and he knows more about these women who come to him than they know about themselves. In the consultations beforehand they shut their eyes and lift up their faces as if the sun is going to touch them. He comes close. When he puts gloved fingers on to flesh, he notes that their mouths open. The nurse sits at their heads, comforting them when the procedures are painful. He knows how they look inside, raw as battered meat, scarred. But the inside of the human body is beautiful to him, no matter how foul the damage done. What no one else sees, he sees. He scrapes and cleans and harvests, and laces up the keyholes in their skin. He loves the hot, casual alertness of the operating theatre, the smell of the antiseptic washing over stomachs, the first, iron smell of blood. He knows how they will heal, how their flesh will swell around his stitching, turn from ruddy purple to green, then brown.

  Mrs O’Driscoll should think herself lucky, he says to himself with a coarseness which he never lets into his more public thoughts. Some surgeons would go ahead and do it. But not him, because he has a reputation to maintain. His patients are his best advertisement. They whisper his name, the whisper travels, and soon there’s another patient in his waiting-room, counting dreams. It’s not a miracle, he tells them. All I can do is help Nature out a little, when she’s having a hard time. Nature intends you to be beautiful.

  ‘So you won’t help me,’ says Mrs O’Driscoll.

  She frowns, making her face still heavier. There’s something about her that riles him, though he is far too well trained to show it.

  ‘You are welcome to read the reports on which I’ve based my decision. I should warn you, you will find some clinics which will be willing to accept you. But here we follow the most scrupulous procedures. I advise you to think very carefully indeed before you go anywhere else.’

  She’s silenced, as he knew she would be. Her fingers move restlessly in her lap. The ring on her third finger sits deep in her flesh. An expensive ring. She’s what — forty? She looks older. One child, born ten years ago after a decade of primary infertility. She’s the type that ages early. One of those girls who are all glow and surface: no bones. Unhappiness makes short work of them. The body swells, demanding something. They eat too much, or they drink, and the skin coarsens, the hair dulls. Drink, in this case. It was perfectly obvious, even before the liver-function tests came back. There’s a characteristic smell that comes off an alcoholic, though she’s unlikely to be aware of it. She’ll have taken care not to drink before coming to see him, but that makes no difference at all. The smell always reminds him of boiled sweets: pear-drops, perhaps. No, that’s not quite it.

  He leans forward, like a wine-taster rolling the finer points over his palate. ‘I’m sorry not to have been able
to be more helpful,’ he says. Her eyes just keep on looking at him, unblinking now, as steady as his. She places both hands on the chair’s arm-rests, and heaves herself up. He thinks she’s going to turn round and go, but she doesn’t. She takes a long look at the photograph of his wife and two blond boys, in its silver frame.

  ‘Did you operate on her yourself?’ she enquires.

  ‘My wife hasn’t —’ he says, too quickly, too indignantly.

  ‘Ah,’ she says. ‘It was just a thought.’ Her plum-like eyes refuse to veil themselves. They stare at him out of the wreck of her face with steady sexual confidence. She’s not even ashamed of herself, he thinks angrily. She acts as if she’s still beautiful. He compares her to the cream of his clients. They are women who take care of themselves. They’ve suffered, but they haven’t let themselves go. Beneath their polish, there is a timidity which he can always ease. They look out at him past their fat, or out of their fallen faces, and they plead with him to know them for what they are. I’m trapped in here. Help me. Recognize me. He would recognize them anywhere; not individually, of course, but by a certain look. It means something to him to be surrounded by women who trust him. They confide in him, let him see the weaknesses they show to nobody else, and accept his reassurances. They are doing their best, and so is he. But these unwinking, plum-coloured eyes — he doesn’t like them. God knows what she is really after.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘It’s too late anyway. It was a mistake to come.’ She stoops to pick up her handbag, and when she straightens her face is flushed.

  ‘Since we’re not going to see each other again,’ she continues, ‘there is something I ought to tell you.’

  ‘What?’ he barks before he can stop himself. He should have had a chaperone in with this one, even though there’s no examination today. Trouble from the moment she walked through the door.