With My Body

‘All you’re responsible for is what is said and done to them, as a parent. That’s all. Nothing else.’ You must remember that.

Lesson 14

Herein the patient must minister to herself

Nine-thirty. You step outside. Lock the door.

Now you are in control. You inhale a breath of steely night air; the cold never ceases to shock in this place, after all these years, still. The children are all asleep, you know they will not wake, know them well enough. You stood in the quietness of their rooms and breathed them in deep and felt a vast peace flood through you, whispering a soothing through your veins. Everyone down, your day done.

But now.

Walking fast through a stillness that is holding its breath. Feeling an old you coming back. The stone walls, the close woods, the bridge over the stream are all coated in a thick frost that has not broken for several days and it is ravishingly beautiful, all of it, but it will never hold your heart. Because it is not home.

It is flinchingly cold, you are not dressed for it, have not thought, just needed to walk, get away, out. Hugh has a work dinner, he’ll be home in a couple of hours, you’ll be back for him, of course. It is suddenly overwhelming you as you walk, the tears are coming now. You dream of being unlocked. By spareness. Simplicity. Light, screaming hurting light. Dream of tall skies, endless space, of being nourished within the sunlight, of never coming back. The tears are streaming now, great gulps, your mouth is webbed by wet. You are not strong here.

You are on the road now, not properly dressed, cannot go back, cannot face any of it. A car flashes by, swerves, beeps in annoyance. There are no footpaths, only grass verges, the lanes are too narrow, built for carts centuries ago, you shouldn’t be walking in this place. You freeze in terror like a rabbit, can’t go forward, can’t go back. You hold your arms around you and weep, and weep, vined by circumstance – you are no longer you. Lost.

Lesson 15

We are able to pass out of our own small daily sphere

More headlights. A van.

Slowing, stopping. You shiver, your heart beats fast.

‘Hello, stranger.’

It is Mel. Another school mum. The one who is different, who never quite belongs. Who breezes in and out of the school like she couldn’t care less, who is … unbound. Who says fuck the quiz night, fuck the summer party, fuck the lot of it: I’ve got better things to do with my life. What, God knows.

She wears real, cool, vintage fur: I don’t do fake anything – coats, fingernails, orgasms.

Everyone suspects she’s been given the school fees for free, the charitable slot. She’s a single mum with a son in Jack’s class. You envy the every-second-weekend-off-from-motherhood that she gets – to sleep in, stay in bed all day, go dancing, potter, drink; to do nothing and everything for once. She runs an antique shop on the High Street – erratic opening hours, bric-a-brac from French flea markets – things you love that Hugh bats away as junk.

Mel picked up her boy, Otis, from a play date once, late. She’d come straight from her pole-dancing class and until that moment you’d had no idea such a thing existed in this place. Mel would have been the girl who wore her school skirt too short and had her dad’s ciggies in her pocket and smuggled dope into the dormitory; it’s all in her face. Appetite and passion and life’s hard knocks and a big open heart no matter how many times she’s pounded upon the rocks. An aura of a woman who revels in life. Who has sex a lot.

Mel always lingers after the boys’ occasional play dates. There’s often been some strange pull, in the silence, you don’t know why; you just want to lean across, it’s ridiculous, she’s not your type, your style. She wears skinny jeans, sometimes Uggs; your palette is the colour of reticence, careful camel or sand or chalk with a dash of black. She’s a woman for God’s sake.

Lesson 16

She hath done what she could

‘Hey,’ Mel says soft, frowning, with infinite understanding. ‘Get in.’

You gulp your tears; the car is warm, the heating on.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong –’ you rush out, your voice veering high, off course.

‘Sssh …’

‘The boys, the school gate, Hugh –’

‘I know, I know.’

Mel has pulled over, down a lane, she is not taking you back, thank God she is not taking you back. You barely register what she is doing: she is listening, that’s all, she wants to know. Her hand is on your knee, just that.

‘Sssh,’ and now the tears are coming again, soft, in the stillness, the quiet; cracked by kindness. You begin to talk, in a way you haven’t for so long.

‘But you’re so lucky.’ Quiet, at the end of it. ‘Don’t you see that? You have so much.’

You look at her. Yes, you nod, yes, you know; yet it has all, bafflingly, come to this.

Mel leans across, holds your chin, and says your name, softly, gently. You smile; no one has spoken to you like that for so long, a cadence of … caring. She kisses you on the cheek, softly, affectionately, in comfort.

It strays.

The tenderness of it, you pull back – but the tenderness, it holds you, draws you.

Something is coming alive within you, after so long, so many years. You go to speak. ‘Sssh,’ Mel soothes, kissing you, kissing you. There is a stirring, like an anemone swaying into life under the water’s caress; your belly is flipping and you remember long ago, the surrendering, opening out, when you had never felt more alive … once, long ago, for six transforming weeks, another place, life. Something long dormant is awakening within you.

Lesson 17

If we do not advance, we retrograde

What you learn, in that tiny lane, in that van, in the darkness seared with light: that feeling, memory, sensation, vividness, can come flooding back. All it takes is the tenderness in a touch. After so long.

You pull away at the shock. Mel laughs softly.

‘You know, sleeping with a woman can be like discovering sex all over again’ – a fingertip slips gently down your cheek, your neck – ‘because we know what works’ – the finger teases – ‘and where.’

You pause. So vulnerable now to touch, kindness, attention of any sort. You shake your head, reach for the door handle, breathe your thanks – the kids, you have to get back. You stumble out.

‘See you at the quiz night.’ Mel smiles a secret smile, starting the van. ‘Or maybe not.’

Striding back, wondrous, tall, through the glittering alive achingly beautiful frost.

Like discovering sex all over again …

It has been so long. So many years, lives, places ago. So many harangued nights of sleeplessness and collapsings into beds without even saying good night to your husband because you’re too tired and too annoyed by some minor irritation like his flossing and his pyjamas pulled up high and his noisy blowing of his nose and anyway he’s already on the way to falling asleep on the couch, in front of the telly, because that is what he always does now, in the shrouded rhythm of your married life.

Lesson 18

Upon which he kisses his little wife, and grows mild

Hugh is home just after 10 p.m., just as he said.

‘He won’t notice, he won’t notice,’ you say to yourself, at the kitchen table, a glass of wine before you.

‘Hiya,’ he yells.