Transfigured
It was a grey Tuesday morning when Clare Middleton, single 37 year old of 14B Laburnum Drive and legal secretary to the firm of Trace, Spilsbury and Arnott, finally went to the doctor’s about her back. In the waiting room the magazines were five months out of date and the pot plants looked anaemic under neon strip lights. Her appointment was scheduled for a quarter past nine, but Clare, who arrived five minutes early, had to wait thirty-five minutes to be seen by her doctor, a lanky, pale man of perhaps twenty-eight years by the name of Yorke, with hair thin as straw and a chummy manner that did not reach a pair of hyperthyroidal eyes like two poached eggs slick within their jelly.
‘Come in, come in. Do sit down,’ beamed Dr Yorke as he held open the door for her.
Clare sat down in the proffered chair and arranged her handbag on her knees.
‘Sorry about the delay,’ continued Dr Yorke, ‘it doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s Tuesday morning or Friday afternoon, we’re always chasing to keep up with ourselves round here. But enough about us – what seems to be the matter with you today, Clare?’
Dr Yorke prided himself on his ability to remember and make repeated reference to a patient’s first name throughout the entirety of a consultation. He thought it lent him the homely tweed and pipe smoke aura of the national health service doctors he remembered from his boyhood.
‘Well, Doctor,’ began Clare (her voice flat and evenly pitched with a faint Midlands twang, the legacy of several years with a maternal great-aunt in Edgbaston while her mother was in a sanatorium), ‘I’ve got these lumps on my back. I thought you should have a look at them.’
Dr Yorke drew a small picture of a smiley face on his pad and looked up at Clare with an expression of grave professional concern.
‘Lumps, eh? And when did you first notice them?’
‘Last week,’ Clare replied. ‘There are two of them, on my shoulders.’
‘Indeed. And do they hurt at all?’
‘No,’ said Clare. ‘They don’t hurt at all.’
‘Not even when you touch them?’ continued the doctor.
‘No, not even when I touch them,’ responded Clare.
‘Right then. I suppose we’d better take a look. Would you mind stepping over to the cubicle and taking your top off? I’ll be over in a minute.’
‘Yes, Doctor,’ Clare replied, standing and moving over to the corner of the room partitioned-off by a green curtain. Standing behind it, Clare removed her overcoat and then lifted her jumper over her head.
‘Dr Yorke?’
‘Yes, Clare?’
‘Do I need to take my bra off, too?’
‘Oh, no, I shouldn’t think that will be necessary. Let’s see how we get along, shall we?’
‘OK.’
Clare perched uncomfortably on the edge of the high, plastic coated bed, which squeaked reluctantly against her buttocks. Her flesh looked white and unfairly copious to her, an inappropriate expanse against the smallness of the cubicle. The doctor whisked back the curtain.
‘Alright then. Shall we take a look? If you could just pop yourself on the bed and turn away from me so I can get a good look at your back?’
Clare attempted to shuffle backwards on the bed, but couldn’t get any leverage. She eventually had to reach her foot out to the steps at the foot of the bed and use them to lever herself backwards.
‘And now turn to face the wall,’ continued Dr Yorke. ‘Sorry it’s not more interesting. Keep meaning to put a picture or two up, but haven’t got round to it yet. OK, right, stop where you are, that’s perfect. Now just hold still for a moment.’
Clare felt the doctor’s cool fingers brush against her shoulder blades and imagined orchids, pale and white.
‘Ah, yes, I see what you mean. There’s one here…And one,’ he paused, his fingers tracing across the top of her back, ‘here.’
‘That’s right, Doctor.’
‘And they don’t hurt when I touch them?’
‘No, Doctor.’
‘No? Good.’
The doctor’s voice rose up to Clare from over her shoulder. ‘And have you been experiencing any other symptoms? Loss of appetite, headaches, nausea?’
Clare thought for a moment. ‘No, I don’t think so, nothing more than usual.’
‘Jolly good. Yes, that’s jolly good. You know,’ he said, straightening up to talk directly to the back of Clare’s head, ‘as far as I can tell, the only thing unusual about your lumps is that they’re situated in more or less the same spot on either side of your spine, almost as if they were symmetrical.’
The doctor bent down again and studied the lumps. There was no denying it: the tiny fleshy extrusions, almost like flaps, each one no more than a couple of millimetres long, were perched with perfect symmetry on the tip of each shoulder blade.
Clare heard the doctor straighten up behind her. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything to worry about here. You can pop your clothes back on and join me back at the desk when you’re ready.’
With her jumper and coat restored, Clare walked back to her chair and sat down. Dr Yorke was turned away from her, staring at some notes on his computer, presumably her own. At Clare’s approach, he turned back towards the room and, with visible effort, hoisted onto his face a grin as deep and real as a shop display.
‘Well, good news, Clare: everything looks perfectly normal. There’s no indication of melanoma and your bumps aren’t situated near any important glands or organs, so I would have thought there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. The only thing I would suggest is that you keep an eye on them; if they get any bigger or start to hurt, come back and see me again. Alright?’
‘Yes, Doctor.’
‘Good girl,’ Dr Yorke said, tailing off somewhat as he realised that his patient was much older than him and he had once again got carried away with his respected family doctor routine. Clare didn’t notice. She stood up, thanked the doctor for his time and made for the door. The doctor, relieved to see his gaucherie go unnoticed, sprang up from his chair and accompanied Clare across the room, even though the room was really too small for it.
‘No, thank you, Clare,’ he lathered, as he opened the door for her, ‘and have a lovely rest of the day, in spite of this grim weather we’re having.’
‘Thank you, Doctor. You too.’
The door shut on Dr Yorke’s grin.
The traffic across town was not bad that morning and Clare pulled into the car park of Trace, Spilsbury and Arnott at 10.35am. Clare turned off the ignition and retrieved her things from the passenger seat (handbag, umbrella, a plastic bag containing her lunch things and a new box of tissues for her desk) then stepped out of the car and locked it behind her. The dun coloured gravel shone slick and yellow from the glow of a nearby street light deceived by the grey skies into thinking it was still dark outside. It crunched under Clare’s sensible heels as she walked towards the door, making her think of breakfast cereal.
Inside, Clare greeted her colleagues and sat down at her desk. She had a lot of work to do that day, mostly transcriptions. Therefore, apart from a short break for lunch during which she consumed the tuna and sweet corn sandwich, packet of reduced salt crisps and carton of Ribena which she had bought at the petrol station, she worked solidly until five-thirty that evening. At five-thirty, she logged off her computer, tidied her desk and went to the ladies’ to wee and check her make-up. She was at the sink, applying a little more mascara, when Sarah, the overweight redheaded girl who sat opposite Clare and who frequently used up much of Clare’s desk-top tissue box due to a perpetual cold, came into the bathroom. She dumped her make-up bag next to Clare’s.
‘So, you ready for tonight?’ said Sarah, her voice nasal with unspent phlegm.
‘Just getting ready now,’ replied Clare.
‘Not getting changed, then?’ said Sarah, eyebrows raised.
‘No,’ said Clare.
‘I’ve got a spare top with me if you like,’ pressed Sarah, clearly hoping to spare Clare the shame of going out in the same top as she had gone to work in.
‘That’s alright,’ said Clare. ‘I like this one.’
‘Reely?’ piped Sarah, who was regularly astonished by phenomena such as sunrise and telephones ringing. ‘God, I couldn’t ever go out in the same top I been wearing all day. I mean, doesn’t feel like you’re going out unless you’re wearing something sparkly, does it?’ She looked hopefully at Clare.
‘Hmm.’
Sarah’s face fell. Clare fished out her compact brush and mirror and topped up her foundation with a little powder, then snapped her bag shut.
‘Right,’ she said, looking up at and meeting Sarah’s eyes via the reflection in the mirror, ‘I’ll see you outside, shall I? We could walk down together.’
‘Yeah, OK. I won’t be a moment. Just got to change and take a tinkle.’ Sarah’s laugh echoed round the bathroom as the door sighed shut behind Clare’s retreating figure.
The occasion that night was the birthday of one of the partners, the Spilsbury in Trace, Spilsbury and Arnott. Clare barely knew Patricia Spilsbury, except for the fact that Patricia was successful, married without children and not much interested in the company of other women. She had a reputation as a socialite and there had been rumours of affairs with clients and even, once, a trainee. She rarely spoke to Clare and only ever about work, even though they were little different in age. Despite this indifference, Clare, like everyone else, was obliged to attend tonight’s drinks at a local bar in town, because protocol, the protocol of watching the boss drink her body weight in margaritas, demanded it. The bar, called Henry’s, was situated on the waterfront, a short walk downhill from the office. The waterfront was a newly built complex of simultaneously garish yet anonymous bars and restaurants gathered around a large central area of decking abutting the small lifeless river which wound sluggishly through the northern end of town, choked with shopping trolleys and hubcaps. When Sarah finally came out of the bathroom, Clare walked down there with her. The sun had set over an hour ago now and full darkness made the car headlights blinding as they came up the hill towards the two women. The cold bit at their legs and pried at their wrists and necks, trying to worm into their coats.
Henry’s was empty when they arrived, as it was still early, but loud music was already pumping through the speakers situated over most of the tables. Most of their colleagues were already grouped around a table in the far corner, beside the bar, and they shouted raucous greetings to the two women. There was a tab tonight, provided by Patricia herself, and many of the attendees were already showing the effects of their brightly coloured drinks.
‘So, what’ll it be, ladies?’ roared Keith Morton, a normally timid solicitor with dandruff.
‘Ooh, I don’t know,’ simpered Sarah.
‘Come on,’ said Keith, getting over-excited, ‘it’s all on the company’s money. Push the boat out.’
‘Oh, you’re awful,’ the lumpen paralegal replied, swatting at his arm and causing Keith to wince.
‘I think I’ll have…’ Sarah’s eyes travelled back and forth along the serried rows of bottles, ‘ooh, what’s that one they always drink in Sex and the City? Come on, Clare, you must know.’
Clare didn’t know. However, Keith, revealing hidden depths, did. ‘It’s called a Cosmopolitan. That’s what they always drink.’
‘Yes!’ squealed Sarah. ‘A Cosmo. That’s what I want.’
Keith, beaming with satisfaction, now swung round to Clare, in the process splashing a little highly carbonated lager over the rim of his pint glass and onto his fingers, which were covered in a layer of fine, almost invisible blond hair. ‘What about you, Miss Clare Middleton? What will you have?’
‘A glass of Chardonnay, please.’
‘Righto: one Cosmo, one Chardonnay, coming right up.’
Keith got served quickly, the bar being so empty, and returned with the drinks before Sarah had brought to a satisfactory conclusion the litany of how many calories she’d eaten that day.
‘Here we are, ladies,’ slurred Keith, cutting Sarah off in the midst of her sausage rolls, ‘your drinks are served. What say you we bag ourselves a table?’
The girls agreed and, on Keith’s direction, made for a booth on the opposite side of the room, close to the entrance, with the solicitor following close behind in classic sheepdog-harrying-flock formation. The booth Keith had chosen was situated as far away as possible from the present location of Saul Schofield, the company’s marketing director and conspicuous owner of a soft-top BMW, a six pack and artificially whitened teeth against artificially darkened skin, who was currently delighting the partners with some choice anecdotes and risqué humour by the bar. Keith hated Saul as he suspected the marketing director, with good reason as it happens, of making Keith the principal butt of his jokes. The girls, of course, were unaware of this as they passed out of the orbit of their colleagues’ conversation and into the cold empty reaches of the bar, with its dance floor animated only by the silent interplay of coloured lights and geometric patterns designed by an unseen computer to approximate happiness and pleasure. Arriving at the booth, Keith squeezed in next to Sarah, which was no mean feat, and cast a greedy, appreciative eye over both girls. He belched discreetly, but the memory of sausage and egg nonetheless drifted across the table to Clare.
‘So,’ he began, ‘have I told you ladies about my new car, the GTI?’
It was 10.15 on a Tuesday night. The employees of Trace, Spilsbury and Arnott had four and a half hours’ steady drinking under their belts with no ballast save for what they’d been able to scrounge from a party platter of mistreated prawns and chips like piping-bags of lukewarm pus. Patricia had left with Saul an hour earlier after slipping over on the dance floor and exposing her knickers to her colleagues and a group of delighted butchers on a convention. She had been leaning heavily on Saul’s arm as they walked and breathing hot tequila into his ear while repeatedly calling him her knight in shiny armour. Sarah had drunk Cosmopolitans until eight thirty, when she announced that they didn’t get a proper woman pissed, and switched to pints. She had then vomited copiously into a pot plant and was now sitting under the table and shouting at passersby that she’d gone blind, which was patently a lie. Keith, who had been unable to stop staring at Sarah’s plentiful (and plentifully exposed) breasts all night and pining after the remote, fairytale prospect of a shag, was now feeling depressed and nauseous. Clare was listening to him tell another story about something he had done to the gasket of his GTI, or the GTI of his gasket; she wasn’t sure; she hadn’t been listening properly for some time, just enjoying the sound the words made as they fell out onto the table amid the puddles of flat lager and prawn shells. After a while, she noticed that Keith had stopped talking and was sobbing silent, clear tears of alcoholic self-pity. She patted him on the arm and he immediately burrowed in against her body, mumbling that she was the kindest, sweetest, most beautiful girl in the whole office. He started stroking her thigh. Clare was tired, so they left together shortly afterwards.
The stars twinkled serenely above the gable ends. Somewhere closer to hand, a toilet flushed. Moments later, Keith stepped out, wiping his hands on his trouser legs.
‘Bit bare in here, isn’t it?’ he said, nodding at Clare’s living room.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Clare asked.
‘A cup of tea? I thought you asked me back here for a night of unbridled passion.’ Keith laughed at his own joke, hiccupped and then struggled to choke down the hot slug of bile which had squirted into his mouth. Clare went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on. She had just finished putting a tea bag in each mug (one a simple affair in pastel stripes, the other inscribed in cursive with the legend ‘A Gift From Torquay’) when Keith came into the kitchen, turned her round and began noisily kissing her. He had a whitehead on his nose and his stubble grated on Clare’s cheek. She thought about pulling away – she had been looking forward to her cup of tea – but then decided that it was too much effort.
Keith, meanwhile, had hitched Clare’s skirt up around her thighs and was attempting to pull down her pants and tights. Clare noticed that he was making a high keening noise in the back of his throat and whispering ‘yes, yes’ occasionally. Clare closed her eyes and let her mind wander. It occurred to her that her favourite programme had been on television tonight, a soap opera about doctors in Australia. She wondered whether she’d be able to catch up online. Keith was fumbling with his trousers now and by the cold air against her skin she realised that he had been successful in removing her knickers. She felt him move against her, the bulk of his body between her legs and the muscles of his back flexing under his shirt. He pushed again, harder this time, forcing Clare up and back, so her buttocks were lifted onto the work surface. It was like being back at the doctor’s, she thought. But something was wrong: Keith seemed unhappy. He pushed against her again, this time so hard that he succeeded in lifting Clare right into the air and then – losing control, scrawny white legs splaying beneath him – letting her slam back onto the work surface. As she landed, Clare felt herself knock something over and turned to see the mug from Torquay slide off the work surface and arc in a slow continuum of milk, mug and teabag to the floor, whereupon the mug smashed itself to pieces in a puddle of milk, beside the wasted teabag.
‘Fucking hell, fucking hell,’ Keith said to himself, and pulled away.
‘Are you alright?’ Clare asked. Keith had his back turned to her, his trousers still round his ankles. Clare could see his socks. Were his shoulders shaking? Clare hoped he wasn’t going to cry again like he had at Henry’s.
But then Keith turned round and Clare could see that he wasn’t crying: he was shaking with rage.
‘Frigid fucking bitch! Why the fuck did you invite me back here if you didn’t want it?’
Clare didn’t understand. She pulled her tights up and her skirt down. Keith watched her and then violently rearranged his own clothing: pulling his trousers up, tucking in his shirt, fastening his belt.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Clare offered.
‘No, I don’t want a cup of fucking tea, fuck you very fucking much. I want to get the hell out of here.’
‘Oh’ said Clare. ‘Alright.’
She turned round.
‘Is that it? What the fuck is wrong with you? Don’t try and tell me it’s your first fucking time.’
‘No,’ said Clare, flicking the kettle on to reheat the water, ‘I’ve had boyfriends.’
‘Well, how the fuck did they get up there, with a crowbar? It’s like trying to squeeze a fucking camel through the eye of a needle. You need to see a doctor, darling, and possibly a psychiatrist.’
Clare poured the hot water into the pastel-striped mug and stirred it. She was trying to think of something to say which would make Keith feel better.
‘Maybe you rushed things, Keith. Perhaps I wasn’t excited enough.’
‘What? You’re trying to blame me? After you led me on like this? That’s a fucking laugh. The problem’s not me, sweetheart, I can assure you of that. The problem is that your vagina’s locked up tighter than Fort fucking Knox. Maybe it’s rusted shut through underuse or something. Maybe you should become a fucking nun. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you this for free: it’s not fucking me who’s got the problem and if you dare tell anyone at work about any of this, I’ll…’ he paused, trying to think of an appropriate threat, ‘I’ll make you live to regret it.’
Keith stared at Clare, his face bloodless with fury and something else, perhaps it was fear. Clare sipped her tea and stared at the pieces of the mug from Torquay. She’d liked that mug. A few seconds later she heard the front door slam.
After her tea was finished, Clare went to the toilet. She was feeling sleepy and looking forward to bed. She automatically tore off a couple of strips of toilet paper and wiped herself. She was just about to stand up and flush the toilet when she thought she may as well check herself out down there, to see if there was any truth to what Keith had said. She reached down and carefully moved her index finger between her labia. Then she stopped, and tried again. After that, she walked through to the living room and got her compact mirror out of her bag. She lifted one leg onto a chair and angled the mirror so she could see up there. Yes, there was no mistaking it. She could still remember the day it had broken, a summer’s day going for a bike ride, the faint spotting of blood in her pants. But now here it was again: her hymen. And this time it seemed to be lower down, almost at the opening of her vagina. She pressed gently against it and noted it was smooth and firm. She pushed harder and then harder still; it would not move or break. Clare put her mirror back into her handbag and went through to the kitchen to pour a glass of water for her bedside. She’d book another appointment with the doctor tomorrow. Perhaps she’d better ask to see a female doctor this time – she knew how embarrassed some male doctors got when they were asked to look at a woman’s private parts. She passed back through the living room and into her bedroom, where she took off her clothes and folded them on a chair. She paused for a moment to look at her body in the full-length mirror she’d propped beside the bed, its long white contours, the twin bruises of her nipples, the triangular scrawl of pubic hair. Then she reached a wrist up and behind her to the opposite shoulder blade and touched the nubbin of flesh that was there. She was sure it felt bigger, sure, indeed, that they both looked bigger when she twisted round and caught sight of them in the mirror. But she was probably imagining it. It had been a long day, after all. And the doctor had said they were quite normal. Clare put her pyjamas on and climbed beneath her duvet. She fell asleep straight after turning off the light and dreamed of beautiful creatures with iridescent peacock eyes flying around her head.
Clare slept right through till 6.45am the next morning, when her alarm woke her at its usual time. She thumbed it off, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and stumbled out to the bathroom. After an unusually long pee, which was approximately 72% cheap Chardonnay, she turned on the shower, stripped off her pyjamas and climbed in.
It was only when she was drying herself off and the towel caught on something on her back that Clare noticed anything unusual. She turned round to check what it was, but couldn’t see properly by the reflection of the tiny, steamed up window above the sink.
She went back to the full-length mirror in her bedroom and turned round. There it was, as she had expected – the towel had got caught on one of the nubbins of flesh on her back, only now it was no longer quite a nubbin. Clare had been right last night: they were growing. Now each flap had sprouted into a thin strip of flesh which extended diagonally downwards for about an inch from its root. Clare reached an arm around to feel one of them. The outermost part of it was just loose flesh, but moving her finger back towards the root she was sure she could feel something solid inside it, like gristle. That was strange. It occurred to Clare that perhaps she should go to the hospital now rather than wait to get an appointment with the doctor later, when they opened. Yes, that would probably be best. She’d better get some breakfast first, though. She wasn’t sure, but Clare thought she quite fancied muesli.
Breakfasted and dressed in a fresh blouse and the same skirt and jacket as last night, Clare left for the hospital half an hour later. The traffic was heavier than usual but Clare amused herself by listening to a radio talk show. They had a guest on who did very good impressions of current celebrities. Clare laughed and laughed.
At the hospital she had to wait in an odd-smelling waiting room with faded watercolour paintings of France on the walls. Old men with vellum skin were pushed past, their watery eyes staring after things that weren’t there anymore. There was an annexe with a gift shop selling teddy bears and “Get Well” balloons and another one with a café selling overpriced sandwiches and slices of pizza whose cheese toppings neatly encapsulated the theory of entropy by cooling into lifeless and impermeable, bright orange crust. The magazines on the tables were torn and out of date and the fish could hardly move for the murk in their tank. Outside the sliding doors, Clare could see yellowish men and women in dressing gowns smoking in the bright sunlight; one of them was pushing his drip in front of him. The music piped in over the stereo was depressing.
‘Mrs Middleton?’
It was an unsmiling nurse with grey hair and blotchy arm fat pushing out from the sleeves of her uniform, carrying a clipboard.
‘Miss,’ said Clare automatically, reaching for her bag.
‘Would you mind following me, please?’
Clare stood up and followed her. As she walked, Clare caught from the nurse’s wake a familiar smell: a sickly sweet blend of dust and sweat, old perfume and milky tea; the smell of female middle age which Clare remembered from infant school classrooms and a kindly teacher whose eyes goggled at her from behind thick national health specs. It occurred to Clare that in a few years she would start to smell like that. The thought did not upset her; it was a smell much like any other. The nurse stopped in front of a row of green rubberised curtains and pulled one back, revealing an empty examination room, a high hard-looking bed, an orange plastic chair, a night-stand. She ushered Clare inside and swept the curtain closed behind them.
‘So, what seems to be the problem?’ the nurse asked, turning to face Clare. She looks tired, Clare thought, patience hanging on by a thread. Clare felt sorry for her.
‘I’ve got these lumps on my back,’ Clare said. ‘I went to the doctor about them already, but they’ve got bigger. The doctor said I should see someone if they got bigger.’
‘Right. And when did you see the doctor?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘So these lumps have got bigger since yesterday?’
‘Yes.’
The nurse looked a bit surprised, but didn’t say anything.
‘Alright,’ she said, ‘shall we take a look?’
Clare took her jacket and shirt off.
‘You can keep your bra on,’ said the nurse, her tone maternally conspiratorial, an automatic kindness between sisters.
‘OK.’
‘Right. What have we here.’ There came the sound of the nurse leaning towards her, Clare could her breathing and smell her distinctive perfume again; the sensation of intimate proximity with another human being was relaxing.
‘Ah, yes. These don’t look like anything to worry about. But I’ll just get the doctor in to have a look at them, just to double check. Here, you can pop this on while you wait.’
The nurse handed Clare a green surgical gown and left the cubicle. Clare pulled on the highly starched gown and fastened its straps in a bow behind her back. With nothing else to do, she dangled her feet back and forth over the edge of the bed. Shortly later, the doctor came in. He was another man a decade or so younger than herself whose harried expression was ornamented with a bow tie and the unmistakable air of someone who believed his true calling had been to entertain.
‘Well, hello there, Mrs Middleton. And how are we today?’
‘Miss,’ said Clare.
The doctor consulted his notes. ‘Miss, that’s right. I do beg your pardon,’ he said, with a little mock bow. ‘So, Nurse tells me you have some rather interesting irregularities to show me.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Clare, turning round her back to the doctor, ‘they’re on my shoulder blades.’
‘Indeed.’
Clare felt the doctor open up the gown and have a prod at the appendages on her back.
‘Let’s see…let’s see…Oh, yes, these are lovely specimens, quite lovely.’
‘But what are they, doctor?’
‘Hmm? Oh, they’re just benign tumours, chondromas, to be specific, which just means they’re made out of cartilage. Quite normal and absolutely nothing to worry about.’
‘Do I need to get them removed?’
‘Oh, could do, could do. It’s up to you, really. Do you want to get rid of them? I mean, they’re so beautifully positioned, one on each shoulder blade like that, almost symmetrically.’
‘Like wings,’ Clare offered.
‘Yes, that’s the spirit. Turn it into a positive. Like wings! How very funny – I shall be sure to tell that to the others when I get back to the doctors’ lounge.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘I’ve also got this thing with my vagina, Doctor,’ Clare continued.
‘Don’t tell me that’s got wings as well!’ The doctor laughed at his own joke.
‘No, it’s more that it seems to have…well, closed up or something.’
‘Really?’ said the doctor. ‘Well, that sounds very interesting. But I’m afraid it’s not really up my alley, if you’ll pardon the expression. Unless you think it’s a medical emergency, I’d suggest that you see a trained gynaecologist about that. Now, is there anything else I can do for you today?’
Clare couldn’t think of anything. ‘No, thank you, Doctor. Thanks for your time.’
She stood up.
‘Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure. Now, I suppose you’d better fly on home, eh, on your new wings!’
‘Yes,’ said Clare, wondering whether she was expected to laugh as well.
Work turned out to be very quiet that day. Everyone was hungover and there were certain notable absences – Patricia, Saul and Sarah among them. Keith showed up, and glowered impressively when he bumped into Clare on the stairs, but, since he worked on the floor above, they didn’t see each other again for the rest of the day. Clare wondered if she should go and say something to him but decided against it. She busied herself instead with work, proofing several proceedings that needed to go to court before the end of the day and then, on finding herself at a loose end around half-three, starting on the huge pile of conveyancing which sat perennially on the farthest edge of her desk. Outside the sun began its slow descent behind the apartment block across the road while closely wrapped shoppers trudged uphill from the town centre to bus stops and car parks and the sky deepened to indigo, revealing the first stars. It was then that Clare heard the voices for the first time. This time it was a man’s voice, and it was speaking very quickly:
‘Oh god need a shit need a shit wonder if ive got time to take one wonder if i could get away with taking a magazine in with me god im so bored so bloody bloody bored actually shitting to keep myself entertained now how sad is that especially when i really should be getting on with this work need to try and get shot of it today already been sitting here for three days if dad finds out im fucked problem is i just cant seem to concentrate at the moment dont know what it is maybe drinking too much two pints for lunch today too much really especially on a hangover christ ive got a filthy fucking headache what time is it only four fuck me how is it only four all i want to do is go home yeah go home put the telly on and eat shit food like sausagesandmashandpieandbeansandgravyandchipsandmushypeas yeah or chickencurryprawnroganjoshlambbiryanisagalookeemanaan fuck yeah definitely go for the latter get a takeaway in and then jesus christ now what the fuck are you staring at fucking horse face bitch fuck off fuck off just stop fucking looking at me.’
Clare quickly looked down at her jotter. It hadn’t been an imaginary voice, then. No, it was quite clearly the voice of Paul Arnott, incompetent fellow paralegal, cherished son of Managing Partner, David Arnott, and the third person with whom Clare shared an office. He was staring straight at her now, which meant that she was the horse-faced bitch. Clare registered vague surprise at this: she hadn’t realised that people thought she looked like a horse. Indeed, the comparison had never occurred to her.
A moment later, Alice, one of the girls from upstairs, came into the room to use the photocopier. She smiled at Paul and Clare and trilled a bright ‘hiya’ as she strode across the room in her high heels, blonde hair bouncing. At the same time, Clare quite distinctly heard Alice’s voice saying, ‘hello daddys boy and shrivel tits just come down here to use your photocopier hope you don’t mind actually don’t care if you do its not your fucking photocopier anyway pathetic wankers acting like this is your office youre only down here because there isnt any room for you losers anywhere else this is just a corridor with desks in anyone can come in here ok so you can stop staring at me god now haven’t you got anything better to do like some work for instance eeurgh paul is ogling my tits again that mans disgusting what a pair of losers oh for fucks sake not this again.’
Alice had reached the photocopier by now and her final outburst came from having spotted the red malfunction button on the copier’s display. This indicated that the copier had once again succumbed to a paper jam or run out of paper and/or toner. Alice started slamming the feed trays open and closed and then force-fed a glut of paper into the middle drawer. Clare carried on listening to her monologue while Alice bent over the control panel and took the necessary steps to coax the copier back to life.
‘Hate this stupid photocopier stupid office cant get anything right bunch of cheapskates round here they could at least buy us a new one this ones about five hundred years old ok so standby right papers loaded now put the first document in what was it fifteen copies of this one yeah and then ten copies of the mortgage lenders report so yeah click whirr beep and bobs your uncle yay its working now mustn’t forget to give mum a call when I get home yeah and have a shower need to shave my legs tonight wonder if tim will be back before me ill kill him if hes late again but if hes around we could go to that new chinese place for dinner only i know hell want curry he always wants curry he eats too much its making him fat its horrid unsexy he used to be sexy he needs to join the gym again get rid of his manboobs his bitchtits ha ha fuck my feet hurt in these shoes cant wait to take them off.’
Against the babble of Alice’s dialogue, Clare realised she could also hear the lower, darker swirl of Paul’s thoughts.
‘Great arse great arse great arse shit id love to fuck her fuck her ragged id fuck her over that photocopier no wait over there on the desk with her legs waving in the air and her panties round one ankle begging me for more while she came againandagainandagain because i am the man I am the fucking man and clare clare could fucking watch oh no what if i was doing it with clare oh god thats wrong shed stroke my face and say I love you and tilt her head back and open her mouth and thered be bits of bread in between her teeth like there always are and christ i need a shit now more than ever it must be the nerves feels like im having a baby gotta go gotta get up right now right now.’
Paul stood and hurried out of the room, followed closely by Alice, who was furious, Clare noticed, at having to follow in the wake of an expedient fart which Paul had permitted to egress silently from between two fiercely clamped buttocks, an olfactory prelude to the impending symphony. The last thing Clare overheard was Alice fantasising about stabbing Paul in the back of the head with a bread knife. Clare stared out of the window. It was almost five now, and fully dark. Clare felt bored, and decided to go home. She’d finished all the work she needed to for the day. She stood up and, as she did so, she felt the gristle on her shoulder blades scratch against her shirt. It was not unpleasant.
Back at home, Clare went straight to the bedroom in order to change out of her work clothes and into some track-suit bottoms and a sweatshirt. Whilst changing she had a look at her back in the mirror. The lumps were even bigger now, and longer. They were definitely flapping. Reaching behind her back, she touched one of them. It was soft and vaguely gelatinous to the touch but there were also prickles on it like a plucked chicken and what felt like needles under the surface. It was probably normal, though – the doctor had said so.
Changed into her slob clothes, Clare went back to the living room, sat herself on the sofa with a packet of Hob-Nobs and switched on the television. However, it wasn’t long before she switched the set off again. She couldn’t concentrate. It was all the noise of other people’s thoughts. She’d noticed it as she drove home – snatches of words, fragments of thoughts, whispers and wails, whipping past her constantly as the drivers and passengers of oncoming cars fleetingly entered her orbit. Then there’d been the student on a bike who stopped beside her at the traffic lights, and Clare had had to listen to him planning how he was going to kill himself when he got home. And yet, on the move, the noise had at least been transient, ephemeral, easily forgotten. Here in her flat, which was on the third floor of a broad six-storey block, the noise of the people who lived all around her was constant. It deafened Clare. She could not concentrate on her favourite soap opera. Frustrated at missing it two nights in a row, Clare decided to get dressed again and go for a drive.
Clare liked driving. Put the radio on and let the miles fall behind you without knowing where you’re headed, that was the charm of it. Perhaps she would head out into the countryside where there wouldn’t be any people for miles around. Yes, that was it.
The white lines in the centre of the road kept pace, loping alongside the car as it travelled further and further outwards from the nestled web of light which marked the town. Road signs flashed out of the darkness announcing strange, unfamiliar names, hyphenated clusters of houses around the white blaze of corner shop and chippy, places that came and went as quick as thinking in the flat, wet countryside, leaving only miles of darkness, of empty fields and blackout skies. It was peaceful, quiet. Clare liked it. She started humming.
She drove for an hour and a half before stopping to refuel at a petrol station. The forecourt was bathed in golden light pouring through the windows of the 24-hour shop, its serried ranks of chilled drinks and sweets, its ditch-water coffee machine and bottles of anti-freeze, its newspapers and glossy magazines, its engine oil and charcoal briquettes. The automatic door sighed open to admit Clare and somewhere an electronic bell chirruped. There was no one else inside apart from the spotty teenager behind the till, whom the bell had woken. He was sulky and monosyllabic in his dealings with Clare, taking her card and shoving it in the chip and pin machine like he wanted to kill it, yet his thoughts revealed him to be suffused with an exceptionally delicate passion, dark as roses, for his best friend. Clare walked back out to her car and drove on.
The odometer told her she’d travelled a hundred and twenty miles and the glowing clock showed 21:55 before Clare thought of stopping. She was on a small B-road just outside a village called Tampon. Clare had never heard of it. She passed a few outlying houses, pretty, low-lying affairs with deep-set windows and whitewashed walls, before quickly reaching the centre. It was picturesque, with an old flint and brick church opposite a closely-shorn village green complete with war memorial, snug-looking pub and teenage existentialists reciting Les fleurs dul mal while huddled around a pot noodle for warmth. Clare decided she wanted a drink.
Inside, the pub was full and noisy. Clare pressed her way through the crowd to the bar. On either side of her as she tripped and pushed past groups of drinkers, she heard the incessant babble of voices. At first, as she picked out snippets about religion and politics and reality TV contestants and this year’s holiday, she assumed that the interior and exterior monologues had blended together, a perfect storm of noise that would obliterate the need to listen, a warm sea of words in which she could drown. But then, to her left, she heard an underlying refrain repeated in overlapping voices, and, yes, there it was over to her right as well, indeed it was now springing up all over the pub, all of the people, thinking the same thing. This is what Clare heard: ‘Rain death sex and pigs. Rain death sex and pigs. Rain death sex and pigs.’
She turned around and walked out.
Outside, the teenagers had abandoned Baudelaire and were trying half-heartedly to set fire to each other. A fine drizzle fell through the sheen of a nearby street lamp. What was Clare going to do now? She didn’t want to be around other people. Their thoughts bored her or, as in the pub, disturbed her. She walked back to her car, bracing her collar against the invading rain.
Driving on from Tampon, Clare suddenly felt a great wave of tiredness wash over her. She decided to stop for a while at the next lay-by she found. This she did, her car bumping to a halt over the rutted earth. She switched the engine and lights off and was plunged into a total darkness, save for the LED glow of the clock. A gust of rain blatted against the windows and shook the car on its suspension. Gradually, Clare’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. On the horizon, the penumbra of light from a nearby town seeped up into the clouds. Near to, a dark stand of trees was swayed and lashed by the wind and the pale frostbitten grass of a nearby field was woven through with the ripples of its passing.
Clare sat and stared, then focused. She had seen something else: the white smear of a footpath sign which pointed into the woods in front of her. Without pausing to think, Clare got out of the car, retrieved her overcoat from the back seat and set off into the trees.
Inside the woods, the wind and light were less. She could hear the former tugging at the branches high above her and see restless shifting diamonds filtering through the canopy as it was heaved back and forth. Clare liked it immediately. She walked, following the footpath, for five or six minutes. The ground was level but the path wound left and right between close-packed stands of trees.
Eventually, Clare came to the lip of a dell. She walked down into it and explored. It was about forty metres across in each direction, with soft chalk walls placing it roughly two metres below the rest of the wood. Within the dell there was vegetation to eye level, comprised mostly of beech saplings and hawthorn bushes. There were also little hillocks and dips in the ground. It was even quieter here than in the rest of the wood. After wandering around for a while, Clare found a dip which appealed to her more than all the others and sat down inside it, on a deep, dry cushion of leaves. She felt sleepy; she did not feel at all cold. After a moment Clare pulled her coat tight around her, lay down and, with the wind for a lullaby, slept.
The half-light of dawn had already come and gone before Clare awoke. Now the white light of a bright winter’s morning drifted down on her face, dappled and flecked with green by its fall through the trees. The few birds remaining from the autumn exodus tweeted away to each other about the pressing matters which only they understood. From Clare’s eye-line as far as she could see, the world was a soft and perfect tapestry of brown leaves and beech husks beneath a vaulted cathedral of branches irradiated with light. She felt happy and bright. She sat up.
But something felt wrong. Yes, that was it. Clare unzipped her overcoat and pushed it aside. Then she did the same with her jumper and her t-shirt, her bra and her shoes and socks and her jeans and her knickers. When all her clothes were lying beside her in a pile, Clare felt better – but also restless. She had so much energy. She wanted to go for a walk through these woods.
The figure she presented as she walked away was a strange one: the naked woman with two stunted wings dangling lifelessly down her back. Of course, they were quite beautiful, being lushly feathered in all the colours of the rainbow, but they were also hopelessly out of proportion, flightless perfections no larger than the wings of a chicken or duck. But Clare did not know anything about that, or indeed care. She did not even notice that during the night her mouth, like her vagina before it, had quite sealed over, fusing her upper and lower lips together in a permanent beatific smile. In fact, she did not think at all. She merely walked on, into the morning.
18-21.10.10
