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Authors: Liz Jensen

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BOOK: Egg Dancing
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     ‘Christ Almighty, I thought you were being raped and tortured by a sociopath,’ she said in a choked voice.

     She forced me down on the sofa and pinned me there, looking about her wildly.

     ‘Jesus, Hazel, have you gone completely crazy?’

     ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ I breathed.

     It felt so free. Suddenly I went faint, and grabbed her arm. She made me do some respiratory exercises which reminded me of childbirth classes, then picked her way through the mess to make me a cup of tea in what was left of the kitchen, while I bled on to the sofa. When she came back she had the face of a prison warden, and handed me a steaming mug.

     ‘Drink this,’ she said, as though it were the antidote to snake-bite.

     I sipped and scalded my tongue and gums.

     ‘I’m going to phone Gregory right away,’ Jane said, after she’d picked most of the glass out of my wrist.

     I let her go through the palaver of phoning the clinic and getting transferred from extension to extension before a nurse told her he was busy on a Caesarean and he’d call back if it was urgent.

     ‘Tell him his wife is extremely ill,’ said Jane frostily, and put down the receiver.

     I could see she was close to tears from the shock of having a madwoman on her hands. It’s not something that occupational aromatherapists usually have to cope with. She drove me to casualty at St Mary’s hospital. I watched her mouthing something to the receptionist, her eyes darting to and fro, a twisted look on her face.

     ‘I’m sorry, Hazel, but I just can’t handle blood. I’ll fetch Billy for you,’ she called as she ran like a bat out of hell through the opaque vinyl swing doors. I waited on a moulded plastic seat, slightly sticky, to be stitched up and bandaged. The man next to me had dislocated both his shoulders at the fitness club, he told me, doing an exercise called the Reverse Pec Strut. There was an old woman with two carrier bags which she kept her life in, I’d say. She had stinking, suppurating sores on both legs. I wanted her to die. It took a long time before they saw to me, but I was off floating in my own murk, a fish that had strayed too deep and beyond direction.

     They stitched me up in a room with a poster on the wall that said in gothic writing:

 

It’s nice to be important –

But it’s more important to be nice!

 

It hurt like crazy, but after you have given birth all pain is relative. The nurse, labelled Ward Sister Fagin, wore orange foundation but she was cold as stainless steel. Staff in casualty wards don’t take kindly to self-inflicted injuries. Afterwards I waited on a bench. An hour later Jane came back, without Billy.

     ‘I’ve left him at my mum’s,’ she said breathlessly. ‘She’s looking after my niece, so he’s got a playmate there. He’s quite happy, by the look of it. I didn’t think he should see you in this state.’

     ‘Thank you, Jane, God, thank you. So much. Now please, please take me home,’ I begged her. ‘I have to pack my things. I have to leave my husband. He comes from hell.’

     ‘All husbands come from hell,’ snapped Jane, as though it were obvious, and we drove back to Oakshott Road in her white Renault 5. She dropped me at my door.

     ‘Call me if you need me. I’ll bring Billy back around four.’

     I had to know if my son was going to go strange and turn into Ma. If, or when. Or could he be touched by the rogue gene already? He did unusual things sometimes – things I’d taken to be ‘boy behaviour’: squashing woodlice, hitting objects inexplicably with a stick, impersonating emergency vehicles. In a way, it all fitted together. Where I come from, the bus to misery arrives promptly and drives fast. I’m not a resourceful woman. So I sat down on our marriage bed and cried like a four year old. Who could I turn to? My family were useless – a loony mother, a father dead from water poisoning and a sister whose hobby was
Schadenfreude
. As for friends – well, I didn’t have many, when I came to think of it – just mothers, really, people to discuss potty training with over coffee and custard creams. Jane, who’d just proved herself adequate in a crisis, wasn’t someone I could confide in. It would have to be someone in a position to help. Someone to whom Genetic Choice already meant something. Someone with power, who knew the system – who would know how to stop Gregory. If it wasn’t already too late. And I thought of Ruby, with her smug smile and her robust tits, and her bloody nerve. I needed someone on my side. A stranger who would take my story seriously, and who could help me find out whether my son was born with an unrefundable ticket to la-la land. The ‘rogue gene’. One particular tree Gregory had failed to count in his nightmare wood of factors and indices. I pictured myself collaborating with my saviour, the two of us working over a sheaf of documentation, heads bowed, the light burning late in his office, preparing the case against Greg for the General Medical Council. Or the police. It was a noble and heroic portrait.

     And yes, I admit it, there were other things too, about Dr Stern. His sympathetic ear. His dependability and assurance. His eyes. And the handshake that squeezed my heart. On the phone to him I was shaking, but I spoke very coldly and clearly. Yes, he said, he’d heard about Dr Stevenson’s Genetic Choice work. Very interesting, very, er, contro
ver
sial. Hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting him
personally
, as far as he
knew
, though their paths may have
crossed
, once or twice  . . .

     ‘Meeting him personally is no pleasure, Dr Stern,’ I said. ‘I’m regretting it by the minute.’

     I told him everything. The pills. The miscarriages. Ruby, and the fact that she might already be pregnant. The possibility of Billy having a thing. You know, a hereditary factor. A rogue gene, something telepathic which meant they could talk even if they weren’t together. A time-bomb of dangerous psychology. What Greg called somewhere in his report a ‘variable’.

     ‘I have to know about Billy,’ I said. ‘Then I can decide what to do.’

     ‘These are very
serious allegations
,’ said Dr Stern.

     ‘I know,’ I said. There was a silence.

     ‘Can you, er,
back them up
in any way? Provide some kind of
paperwork
on this?’

     When I told him all about the disc, and what sort of things were on it, he became excited and intrigued. He asked me a lot about what I’d understood. How familiar was I with scientific terminology? Very, I told him. It’s my muzak. Then there were quite a lot of questions about me ‘as a
person
’, since we hadn’t had a chance to get to know each other when I’d visited my mother. He spoke gently, picking his words very carefully, like flowers for an important bouquet. He was clearly trying to work out whether I was telling the truth or whether I’d gone mad, like Ma. I didn’t blame him.

     ‘Is there any way you can bring me the disc?’ he asked eventually.

     ‘Not without Greg noticing it’s gone,’ I told him. ‘It’s too risky.’

     In the end, we agreed that I should leave without it, but go back to the house in a couple of days, while Gregory was out at work, and copy it or print it out.

     ‘I’ll contact your husband,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him I’ve taken you into my care at your own request.’

     ‘I’m not coming to Manxheath,’ I said quickly, picturing Ma’s bulky silhouette in the doorway.

     ‘Of course not, Mrs Stevenson. But it might be better for your
husband
to think that. I’ll convince him that it’s best to keep your
son
with you while you’re . . .
ill
. Have you got somewhere to go?’

     ‘I’ll book into a hotel. With Billy.’

     ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘Somewhere like the Hopeworth?’

     The Hopeworth. The pride of Gridiron City. The brightest star in its small firmament. A sign that Gridiron is on the up and up. Executives stay there on business. It’s the venue for Lion’s Club lunches, multi-charity dinner-dances, the Gridiron Floral Experience, Gala Nites. It’s across the park from Manxheath, but a whole world away. It has a coffee shop that serves the best whipped
cappuccino
in the North. It has little racks of postcards depicting views of Gridiron: Gridiron by night, Gridiron at dawn, and a little pie-chart showing panoramas of Gridiron with fireworks and a cartoon Mickey Mouse doing cartwheels in the foreground. It is a haven of sanity.

     ‘Yes. I’ll be at the Hopeworth – under Sugden.’

     My maiden name. It always reminded me of a blocked sink. I’d been happy to get rid of it, once upon a time.

     ‘Have you, er . . . ?’

     ‘It’s all right, I have money,’ I said, recalling the American Express card that carried my other name: Mrs Hazel Stevenson. My card, Greg’s money.

     ‘Tell my husband I’ve smashed up a few things in the house,’ I said. ‘But I found the bicarbonate of soda.’ I felt unnaturally calm and collected. ‘And give my regards to Ma.’

     I could have told Greg about what I’d done to the house myself, as it happened, because as soon as I’d put down the phone, it rang. I knew it would be him. I let it ring for ten rings while I decided what to tell him. I’d keep it brief.

     ‘Hello?’ I said coolly.

     ‘What’s going on?’ he asked, not even trying to hide his annoyance. ‘I got some garbled message from Jane saying you were ill.’

     ‘I’m OK,’ I told him. ‘But I had a sort of turn. I think you were right about the stress. I’ve just spoken to Dr Stern at Manxheath, and he’s going to give you a call. He thinks I might need some kind of rest. I’m going over there now, and he might keep me in. He says Billy can stay with me, and go to the hospital crèche.’

     ‘My God,’ said Greg, sounding genuinely concerned. ‘What do you mean, a turn?’

     ‘Well, it all started last night,’ I said. ‘I had a lot of things churning round in my head, and this morning after you left, after we had that row about Ruby, I just sort of snapped.’

     There was a sound like a stifled groan from the other end of the line.

     ‘What?’ I said.

     ‘I’ll be on my way as soon as I’ve tidied up this post-op patient,’ he said.

     ‘No,’ I told him. ‘Don’t bother. I’m OK. I don’t much want to see you, in fact.’

     ‘I’ll call Dr Stern right away,’ he said. ‘I’ll put him in the picture.’

     ‘I’ve done that,’ I said. ‘I told him you think I’m having delusions. And he knows about Ma already, remember?’

     ‘I’ll talk to him anyway,’ said Gregory.

     His voice sounded very faint, like he might be wondering something. I hung up.

     Having Dr Stern on my side made me feel strangely powerful. It was the same feeling I have had sometimes during sex.

FIVE

Today’s the day

The time is now

Let Jesus in

It’s
Holy Hour
!

 

‘Welcome folks!’ The televangelist rolls up purple sleeves and rubs together chunky, do-it-yourself hands. ‘A pleasure and a privilege to be here today, folks. It really is.’

     ‘Amen,’ murmurs the audience. Those without concessions have paid £30 a head.

     ‘Amen,’ croaks Linda, and stubs out her cigarette into a foil ashtray.

     She is watching the show on TV in the Ministry canteen. Across the formica, Hervé Démaret, her French visitor from the Commission du Beurre Congelé, stirs his bright pink raspberry yoghurt with distaste and observes the absurd Mademoiselle Sugden, stern dominatrix of the Edible Fats Policy Division (Butter Sub-Unit), with baleful eyes. Back in Lille, such shocking dress sense would warrant a memo.

     ‘You English, you put too much false colouration in your
nourriture
,’ he reproaches her, by way of conversation, inspecting a lump of vermilion fruit with the mistrust it deserved.

     ‘Shhh! D’you mind? Can’t you see I’m having lunch and watching television?’

     Colleagues within earshot exchange did-you-ever smirks, and shrug their shoulders. Trish, at the next table, points out Linda to Chrissie and makes a circular gesture next to her head, indicating a screw loose.

     ‘You call zat lunch?’ snorts the Frenchman, inspecting Linda’s plate as though it were an animal dropping. And jerks his head in the direction of the gesticulating televangelist.

     ‘You call zat television?’

     Linda pretends to notice neither the exaggerated scrape of Hervé’s chair as he leaves, muttering,
‘Elle est dingue, cette nénette,
’ nor his whispered conversation with Mr Foley, her boss, who is sipping unsweetened espresso in a corner seat. His face indicates he would be happier with poison.

     ‘Not the first complaint I’ve had,’ says Mr Foley. Linda feels the sting of two pairs of eyes, one blue, one green, on her back as she returns the television’s stare.

     The Reverend’s hands cleave together and knead, as though attempting to mate.

BOOK: Egg Dancing
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