I Take You Read online

  Connie looks across at her bookshelf, an old shoe rack from the Golborne Road, and skims all the strong female voices that have spined her own life. Any clues? Help? Are all female narratives of empowerment narratives of escape? It’s why Portrait of a Lady is so devastating, of course, why she could only ever bear to read it once. She picks up Mel’s battered old Virginia Woolf. NEVER READ THIS AGAIN – but of course, no, she must. ‘I’m always doing what I’m told not to,’ that’s what he said to her that odd, jangly night. Connie thinks of his separateness, his self-containment, the potency of a man strong with his choices and not wavering from them. She flips open To the Lighthouse and starts to read. The thud of recognition, the heart-stopping thud of it, and she scrabbles for a journal and scribbles in it. Again and again. A roar of pages filled up.

  A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her.

  Yes, yes. Woolf will be her guide, her beacon. All her novels, her essays, her certainties and admonishments and eviscerating truths. Tomorrow she will go to Daunt’s, buy the extent of her.

  She must act. Just that. Now, before it is too late.

  43

  There is no doubt in my mind, that I have found out how to begin to say something in my own voice

  The intercom, buzzing in her bedroom. Insistent. Connie picks it up. Neither greeting nor warmth. ‘Prepare yourself. You have an hour. I’ll be in my office.’

  The voice struts. Ah, the Cliff of old.

  Connie’s hand reaches down, she is a different woman now, she has been hauled into a different life and her body blazes it. She is fuller and softer and looser, hairier; her body less brittle, self-hating, desperate. No, she will do this, reveal herself. It is the start of the new life and Cliff must know it. She stands proud in front of the mirror, marvelling at the fresh self. Reclaimed, returned to nature, the earth.

  The intercom again. ‘Bring your trinket. I want to put it in. I want to snap it shut.’

  Connie does not respond, cannot. The punctures would be closed up now, surely, faint scars all that’s left of her former life. The padlock lies somewhere lost in the dirt near the shed, claimed by the undergrowth. She mustn’t think how much it was worth.

  Connie turns back the mirror, biting her lip; back to her new body and everything it signals about her release. Her husband waits. She will not shave herself, she will not give him what he wants; the fury will be incandescent. Connie is very still, for a moment, stuck. What is she doing? What will be the consequences? Is she mad? She suddenly feels like she’s standing barefoot on oysters, stranded by an incoming tide, can’t move but can’t stay, stuck.

  She must go down.

  Cannot be a fugitive in her own house. She showers, throws on the silken kimono, ties it languidly, ready for a slipping off. Pads slowly down, down the grand staircase, breathing measured and calm, collecting herself.

  Shuts the office door behind her. The screen is down; it runs almost the length of one wall. So, a video, porn, right; and usually as she watches them with Cliff the liquid warmth plumes through her despite herself and she cannot help but succumb, despite herself, widening her legs on her chair and playing as Cliff hands across a vibrator, and another, as he toys with his Mont Blanc pen, the secret signal that begins it all and she is opening out, needing the coming, urgently, the next step. And she is greedy with the looking at these films as long as it doesn’t veer into anything too long, or monotonous; it is all the thrill, the anticipation that she wants.

  Cliff wheels up to her now, vividness in his face, a video camera in his lap; he has sometimes filmed in the past and she has played up to it, trusting, yielding so much; entranced. ‘I need my wife back.’

  Eagerly his Mont Blanc pen tugs the bow of her kimono, loosens it. The silk falls open. Connie drops the gown from her shoulders. Her husband gasps. It is as if a vast gulf suddenly separates them. As if his wife has gone on a strange new journey without him knowing anything of it. He has not controlled it in any way, has not allowed it, she is lost.

  ‘It – it doesn’t mean anything to me any more, Cliff. It’s just … gone.’ She shrugs. ‘Everything we do. All of it.’ She shuts her eyes on hot wet. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  They stare at each other, the two of them who have bared so much, gone on such a journey in tandem, nothing to say because there is nothing to say. The whole scenario worked because it was the two of them together, in an entranced and astonished collaboration. Cliff’s lips tighten. He spins his chair. ‘I wish you’d told me,’ he says, tight. He clicks on the film, a black man with an enormous cock and a white woman with impossible breasts, the ridiculous thrusting, the ugly close-up, the monotony, the bleakness, the utter absence of mystery and beauty in any of it; Connie cannot watch.

  She picks up her robe, puts it back on and ties the belt firm and tight.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  A match snuffed.

  ‘I need something else now.’

  ‘What?’ The word is spat, as if Cliff can hardly bear to ask.

  Connie shrugs, helpless. ‘Life.’

  Cliff’s face. Pale with fury and devastation and loss.

  44

  To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself

  Sunday morning. Needing a quietening. A necessary removal from all of them, to recalibrate. What is happening to Connie as uncertainty and indecision stain her life? A drawing to … what? Mystery. A veering towards it like an ocean liner subtly altering course for a new destination in the great ocean of life. Yet the destination’s unknown.

  Before Cliff’s accident Connie had attended church. He certainly didn’t, ever, still doesn’t; one of those pitbull atheists, a sneerer à la Dawkins. Yet increasingly she’s finding there’s something … all-calming … about her Sunday morning experiences at the family-crammed church of St Peter’s in its high, shouting ochre on Notting’s hill. It’s an astonishing leak through a veneer of aspirant coolness and moneyed cynicism; a gentle drip, drip, through her restless, caged, unsettled life. Connie feels righted by these assignations, balmed, lit.

  ‘I like that you go to church,’ Mel said to her once, even though he doesn’t go himself. As if it softens her. As if it separates her from those who are the jeering, the sneering, the unsettled – and the ones with a chip of ice.

  So. Sunday mornings, quite bravely alone. Connie’s brief coracle of solace. Brought down into stillness by a spiritual enveloping from a service mostly sung. The hour or so freshening, shining, rejuvenating. At times she says no, it’s ridiculous, she’s with that gentle atheist, Alain de Botton on this one; tipping her hat to the graces within organized religion but not sucked in by them. Yet Connie knows that she’ll never be aligned with the Cliffs and the Dawkins of the world, thumping that believers are deluded, stupid; she has too much respect for the mysterious in life. Which includes Mel. Can’t turn her back on wonder, craves it, in a sense. Found it, long ago, in the wild places of her travelling youth, the places where the silence hums – Greenland’s ice deserts, Cornwall’s high moors, under a full butter moon – yes, yes. She wants those places again. Somewhere in her life. Her rescue is tied up in them, she just knows it.

  Connie feels silted up, often now, with the great weight of acquiring and cramming and rushing and worrying and just getting by; grubbied. Needs the simplicity of a spiritual way, its light touch, a tuning fork back into calm. The ocean liner on its unknown path is veering her towards those most shining qualities of religious practice: pilgrimage, contemplation, quiet. With Mel, she hopes. Somehow.

  What she does know: that religion’s a miracle of survival. That places of potent spirituality do not belong entirely to earth. The tugging, the faint whisper of a tugging … and Connie has to find her way back to them. Urgently, it feels now.

  Alone, or with some
one else.

  45

  I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts

  Everywhere the lovely tight buds of the roses, waiting for a springing into bloom, everywhere the vast loosening as light floods weary, winter-bowed bones, everywhere an uncurling, an unfolding. People, their faces open to the sky, flowers, the happy philadelphus and yellow-wort and the springing grass before the dryness of summer and it all turns to leaching heat and spareness and dust; it’s a tingling day of high giddiness and Connie wants to grab all of it, all, this teeming exuberance, wander through it with eyes wide and fingers trailing and be replenished, by all of it, smell it and giggle and delight. In the garden, of course.

  ‘I want to touch you like you touch me,’ she tells Mel. ‘I’ve never really touched your body, properly, like you have mine.’

  ‘How do I touch you?’

  ‘With reverence. I’ll never forget it. Because no man’s ever touched me like that before. If I never saw you again, after this day, I’d remember your touch for the rest of my life. It’s … stamped. Yes, that’s the word. Stamped. By tenderness. I’ll never forget it.’

  Connie straddles Mel’s supine body and shuts her eyes and places her two palms flat on his chest.

  ‘You feel me as if you’re blind. As if it’s the last time you’ll ever touch me, every time you do that. It’s like you’re committing everything to memory, wondering and delighting and … sanctifying … yes, that. So I’ll never forget you. It’s a gift, you know.’

  Mel’s penis stirs under her hand, Connie slips it into her, moves on him, soft. Brings him into a coming with her sensitivity learned and her quietness and as he peaks she bears down on him, voluptuous and feels him spasming in her like a dying animal and embraces as if it’s the last time, the last time ever, and she will never forget.

  ‘Do you know what you’re doing?’ he pants. ‘You’re trapping me.’

  ‘Yes, ssssh, it’s all right, no talk.’ A fingertip brushes down Mel’s lips, a vast smile fills her up.

  46

  They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions

  On a glary morning of high heat Connie feels a quickening in her womb, as if the sunshine has touched it and bloomed it into happiness. All about her, nannies and babies in the garden and chitter-chat, all about her, friends falling pregnant, baby showers, girlfriends needing coffees and catch-ups and movie nights. Connie’s always a good sounding board, someone peaceful and repairing to have about. They call her a lot, checking up. She’s a listener, a deep pool of stillness and quiet just waiting to receive, one of those rare ones who never wants to talk about herself. She doesn’t butt in over sentences, trying to dazzle with her own thoughts, doesn’t crash into conversations with ever bigger and better and more hilarious anecdotes.

  Connie wonders, though, at yet another brasserie of blonde wood and ringing talk, if the social world is becoming a little more shouty now, raucous, in your face? Everyone’s so eager to talk at you, over the top of you, cram in their two bobs’ worth – but actually, quietly, to enquire? To listen deeply? No, she doesn’t see much of that. Only with Mel, who asks so many questions of her and it’s so odd in a man; he seems at times as if he wanted to drink her up. Needing to understand.

  She longs often for Mel’s quiet. The comfort of their silence, in sync. With Cliff the silence was oppressive, accusatory, as it shouted their differences, that they had so little in common and how did they get to this and they must spend the rest of their lives amid it.

  Connie’s book club is fracturing as hospital appointments, pregnancy yoga classes, exhaustion, end-of-year concerts and summer parties disrupt life. Again and again it feels like Connie’s friends are succumbing and falling pregnant but they’re always careful with this news around her, Cliff being Cliff of course, and the accident … and she’s always so reticent about that side of her life now, poor lamb … there’s been a vast reassessing, a reining back … it must be very painful, not too much is asked.

  ‘Tragic, all of it. Such a supreme alpha male. He probably couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else’s child so that’s that, I guess. She’s the good wife, Con. Bless.’

  No, Connie would not be drawn. On any of it. Such a rare orchid in her exquisitely tasteful, lonely married life; pitied, talked about, endlessly called on to be godmother as if that would be enough. But her thinking veers so fundamentally, often now; she’s reluctant to bring a child into this jangly, jittery world of keeping up, couldn’t say any of this to any of them. Sees it again and again, all around her: how children seem to send the women around her slightly mad. Piteously obsessed. Is it exhaustion? Empowerment now they’re no longer at work? Competitive banker husbands demanding too much of everyone? Too much time on their hands?

  The friends who turn into harridans, bullies, where their child’s school is involved, haranguing the teachers and the principals over their precious, infinitely talented darlings; demanding better results, more readings in church, a bigger role in the school play, more tuition, attention, certificates. Imogen has a poo phobia so can never change her baby’s nappies, has to have round-the-clock help and Connie wonders if it’s a secret canniness. Charlotte, Honor and Floss have weekend nannies alongside nannies for each child during the week; when, Connie wonders, are those children actually noticed, let alone surrounded by their parents, basted in love like butter and cherished? India endlessly rails over the mobile phones given out as party gifts at a girl’s twelfth birthday, yet gives out goldfish to every child at her son’s sixth. Then the flurry of end-of-year teacher presents: the voluptuous bouquets from Wild at Heart as big as a television, bottles of Moët, exquisite gift boxes from Space NK. Then there’s the horror of the entrance exams, when her friends disappear into an insanity of pushing and tutoring and hating and shouting and deep, wrenching torment over who got into what. For Connie, sitting back among it all and quietly listening, endlessly listening, this world feels mad, unhinged, overripe.

  Could she ever raise a child amid all this?

  With no money, at that?

  Could she ever compete on the back foot – or would she go mad with it?

  47

  I have been stained by you and corrupted … What dissolution of the soul you demanded in order to get through one day, what lies, bowings, scrapings, fluency and servility! How you chained me to one spot, one hour, one chair, and sat yourself down opposite! How you snatched from me the white spaces that lie between hour and hour and rolled them into dirty pellets and tossed them into the wastepaper basket with your greasy paws. Yet those were my life.

  Summer is unfurling like a carpet Connie steps upon. Out, out, she must be out in it, often, away from the prison of her house. Its thickness of atmosphere. Cliff is biding his time, she can tell; the punishment is brewing and it will be magnificent. She does not know what correcting will befall her since that day when she boldly bared her new self to him, when she finally said no, enough. Cliff has been icily civil ever since but she knows it’s not the end of it; there are little pinpricks of putdowns, often now, leaking through his veneer of control. Once they would have eaten away at Connie but no, not now, because she has something else: an anchor in another life.

  ‘You could never get a job, Con, you’ve been out of the workforce too long. No one would have you. And you’d do … what?’ ‘Another bag from Rellik? Do you need help? Shoppers Anonymous perhaps?’ ‘Are you getting fat?’ ‘Is that a tummy I can spy coming along?’ Yet still Cliff does not know of Mel, Connie is sure of it, it is just a sense of … difference … a chasm opening up that he can almost sniff out. And so the attempts at shattering her con
fidence, reining her back, before it is too late.

  Even when they are together, even when there is the pretence of that, Connie is not with him now. On this, a trilling day of sprightly light, she cannot resist. Cliff is in his chair by the bench on the lawn and she is expected in her place, her papers on her lap, their public ritual of solidity and togetherness that is noted by everyone who strolls the park. But Connie can’t help it. As Cliff is buried in the How to Spend It magazine she slips into the lip of her wild place. Knows she should not. The risk, the risk.

  Mel comes up the path from the shed, is able to cup her breast quick and lift it in enquiry and smile secrets then, ‘Con, Con!’ comes Cliff’s voice from the lawn. Mel grimaces, she departs.

  Cliff has a new wheelchair. It’s just been shipped across from the States. Custom-built, state-of-the-art, designed by Philippe Starck, a slip of a thing of enormous strength. He is testing it out, wants Connie to see it. He has moved across to grass that needs a cutting, is trying to get up the soft slope and determined to do it as if attempting to haul himself into independence, movement, action and this new contraption will be the grand symbol of it. The chair struggles with its grip, with the weight. ‘Come on, you little beauty!’ he admonishes. ‘You can do it.’ It goes slowly. Connie is now beside him, encouraging him, softly.

  They stop for a breather by a large oak. A squirrel races up the trunk and looks at them quizzically from a high branch. ‘Look!’ Connie cries out. ‘It approves, Cliff, it’s laughing at us.’