Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis (Myths) (8 page)

Your first brief, Keith is saying, is a piece replying to the article in the British-based Independent newspaper this morning, which you’ll have seen –

(I haven’t. Oh God.)

– about how bottled water uses much less stringent testing than tap water. DDR, ah, ah.

DD … ? I say.

Deny Disparage Rephrase, Keith says. Use your

initiative. Your imagination. So many of those so-called regulated tests on tap water useless and some of them actually harmful. Science insists, and many scientists insist. Statistics say.
Our
independent findings versus
their
crackpot findings. You pen it, we place it.

(He wants me to do – what?)

Your second brief is a little tougher. But I know you’ll meet it. Small body of irate ethnics in one of our Indian sub-interests factioning against our planned filter-dam two-thirds completed and soon to power four Pure labs in the area.
They say
: our dam blocks their access to fresh water and ruins their crops.
We say
:
they’re ethnic troublemakers who are trying to involve us in a despicable religious war. Use the word terrorism if necessary. Got it?

(Do what?)

(This chair feels unsafe. Its slight moving under Keith’s arm is making me feel sick.)

Fifty-five and upwards per annum, Keith says, negotiable after the handling of these first two briefs.

(But it’s – wrong.)

Our kind of person, Keith says.

(Keith’s midriff is close to my eyes. I can see that his trousers are repressing an erection. More, I can see that he wants me to see it. He is actually showing me his hidden hard-on.)

… brightest star in the UK-based Pure-concern sky, he’s saying, and I know you can do it, ah, ah, –

(I try to say my name. But I can’t speak. My mouth’s too dry.)

(It’s possible that he came all the way out here to this prefab and set the height level of this chair at the exact height for me to see his erection properly.)

… only girl this high in management, he is saying.

(I can’t say anything.)

(Then I remember the last time I needed a glass of water.)

(I think about what a glass of water means.)

I can’t do this, I say.

Yes you can, he says. You’re not a silly girl.

No, I’m not, I say. And I can’t make up rubbish and pretend it’s true. Those people in India. That water is their right.

Not so, my little Scotty dog, Keith says. According to the World Water Forum 2000, whose subject was water’s exact designation, water is not a human right. Water is a human need. And that means we can market it. We can sell a need. It’s our
human right
to.

Keith, that’s ridiculous, I say. Those words you just used are all in the wrong places.

Keith spins the chair round with me in it until it’s facing him. He stands with his hands on the arms and leans over me so I can’t get out of the chair. He looks at me solemnly. He gives the chair a playful little warning jolt.

I shake my head.

It’s bullshit, Keith, I say. You can’t do that.

It’s international-government-ratified, he says. It’s law. Whether you think it’s bullshit or not. And I can do what I like. And there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.

Then the law should be changed, I hear myself say. It’s a wrong law. And there’s a lot I can do about it. What I can do is, I can, uh, I can say as loudly as I possibly can, everywhere that I can, that it shouldn’t be happening like this, until as many people hear as it takes to make it not happen.

I hear my own voice get louder and louder. But Keith doesn’t move. He doesn’t flinch. He holds the chair square.

Your surname again? he says quietly.

I take a breath.

It’s Gunn, I say.

He shakes his head as if it was him who named me, as if he can decide what I’m called and what I’m not.

Not really Pure material, he says. Pity. You looked just right.

I can feel something rising in me as big as his hard-on. It’s anger.

It forces me up on to my feet, lurches me forward in the chair so that my head nearly hits his head and he has to step back.

I take a deep breath. I keep myself calm. I speak quietly.

Which way’s the station from here, Keith, and will I need a cab? I ask.

Locked in the ladies toilet in the main prefab while I’m waiting for the taxi, I throw up. Luckily I am adept at throwing up, so I get none of it on my clothes.

(But it is the second time for months and months, I realise as the taxi pulls away from Pure Base Camp, that I haven’t thrown up on purpose.)

I get myself back to London. I love London! I walk between Euston and King’s Cross like it’s something I do all the time, like I belong among all these other people walking along a London street.

I manage to get a seat in a sitting-up carriage on the last sleeper north.

On the journey I tell the other three people in the carriage about Pure and about the people in India.

English people are just as shy and polite as Scottish people really, under all that pretend confidence, and some of them can be very nice.

But I will also have to find a way of telling the story that doesn’t make people look away, or go and sit somewhere else.

Still, even though I’m sitting here near-shouting about the ways of the world at a few strangers in a near-empty railway carriage, I feel – what is it I feel?

I feel completely sane.

I feel all energised. I feel so energised on this slow-moving train that it’s like I’m travelling faster than the train is. I feel all loaded. A loaded Gunn!

Somewhere in Northumberland, as the train slows up again, I remember the story about the clan I get my name from, the story about the Gunn girl who was wooed by the chief of another clan and who didn’t like him. She refused to marry him.

So he came to the Gunn castle one day and he killed all the Gunns he could find, in fact he killed everybody, family or not, that he happened to meet on his way to her chamber. When he got there he broke the door down. He took her by force.

He drove her miles and miles to his own stronghold where he shut her up at the top of a tower until she’d give in.

But she didn’t give in. She never gave in. She threw herself out of the tower instead, to her death. Ha!

I used to think that story of my far-back ancestor was a morbid story. But tonight, I mean this morning, on this train about to cross the border between there and here, a story like that one becomes all about where we see it from. Where we’re lucky enough

(or unlucky enough)

to see it from.

And listen. Listen, you other two remaining people asleep right now. Listen, world out there, slow-passing beyond the train windows. I’m Imogen Gunn. I come from a family that can’t be had. I come from a country that’s the opposite of a, what was it, dominant narrative. I’m all Highland adrenalin. I’m all teuchter laughter and I’m all teuchter anger. Pure! Ha!

We roll slowly past the Lowland sea, and the sea belongs to all of us. We roll slowly past the rugged banks of lochs and rivers in a kind of clearness of fine early morning summer light, and they’re full of water that belongs to everyone.

Then I think to check my phone.

Seven missed calls – from Paul!

It’s a sign!

(And to think I used to think he wasn’t the right kind of person for me.)

Even though it’s really late, I mean really early morning, I call him straight back without listening to any of the messages.

Paul, I say. It’s me. Did I wake you?

No, it’s fine, he says. Well, I mean, you did. But Imogen –

Listen, Paul, I say. First there’s something I have to say. And it’s this. I really like you. I mean, I really, really like you. I’ve liked you since the very first moment we met. You were at the water cooler. Remember?

Imogen –, he says.

And you know I like you. You know I do. There’s that thing between us. You know the thing I mean. The thing where it doesn’t matter where you are in a room, you still know exactly where the other person is.

Imogen –, Paul says.

And I know I’m not supposed to say, but I think if you like me too, and if you’re not gay or anything, we should do something about it, I say.

Gay? he says.

You know, I say. You never know.

Imogen, have you been drinking? he says.

Just water, I say. And I mean, it’s not the same thing at all, I know, but you seem quite female to me, I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean it in a good way, you have a lot of feminine principle, I know that, I know it instinctually, and it’s unusual in a man, and I really like it. I love it, actually.

Listen. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all night, because –, he says.

Yeah, well, if it’s about the print-outs, I say, there’s no point. The print-outs were irrelevant. I wasn’t phoning you about print-outs anyway. I was just trying to get your attention in the only way I could think of without actually telling you I fancied you out loud. And they really don’t matter any more, not to me, as I’m no longer a Puree.

It’s not the print-outs, Paul says.

And maybe you don’t like me, maybe you’re embarrassed that I said what I felt, well, never mind, I won’t mind, I’m a grown-up, I’ll be okay, but I needed to say it out loud, to tell you anyway, and I’m tired of feeling things I never get to express, things that I always have to hold inside, I’m fed up not knowing whether I’m saying the right thing when I do speak, anyway I thought I’d be brave, I thought it was worth it, and I hope you don’t mind me saying.

Words are coming out of me like someone turned me on like a tap. It’s Paul. He – turns me on!

But as soon as he gets the chance, Paul cuts in.

Imogen. Listen. It’s your sister, he says.

My heart in me. Nothing else. Everything else blank.

What about my sister? What’s happened to my sister? I say.

*
*
*

Paul is waiting for me at the station when the train pulls in.

Why aren’t you at work? I say.

Because I’m here instead, he says.

He slings my bag into the boot of his car then locks the car with his key fob.

We’ll walk, he says. You’ll see it better that way. The first one is on the wall of the Eastgate Centre, I think because of the traffic coming into town, the people in cars get long enough to read it when they stop at the traffic lights. God knows how anybody got up that high and stayed up there without being disturbed long enough to do it.

He walks me past Marks and Spencers, about fifteen yards down the road. Sure enough, the people in the cars stopped at the traffic lights are peering at something above my head, even leaning out of their car windows to see it more clearly.

I turn round.

Behind me and above me on the wall the words are bright, red, huge. They’re in the same writing as was on the Pure sign before they replaced it. They’ve been framed in a beautiful, baroque-looking, trompe l’œil picture-frame in gold. They say: ACROSS THE WORLD, TWO MILLION GIRLS, KILLED BEFORE BIRTH OR AT BIRTH BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T BOYS. THAT’S ON RECORD. ADD TO THAT THE OFF-RECORD ESTIMATE OF FIFTY-EIGHT MILLION MORE GIRLS, KILLED BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T BOYS. THAT’S SIXTY MILLION GIRLS. Underneath this, in a handwriting I recognise, even though it’s a lot bigger than usual: THIS MUST CHANGE. Iphis and Ianthe the message girls 2007.

Dear God, I say.

I know, Paul says.

So many girls, I say in case Paul isn’t understanding me.

Yes, Paul says.

Sixty million. I say. How? How can that happen in this day and age? How do we not know about that?

We do now, he says. Pretty much the whole of Inverness knows about it now, if they want to. And more. Much more.

What else? I say.

He walks me back past the shops and up the pedestrian precinct into town, to the Town House. A small group of people is watching two men in overalls scouring the red off the front wall with a spray gun. IN NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW ARE WOMEN’S WAGES EQUAL TO MEN’S WAGES. THIS MUST CHA

Half the frame and the bit with the names and the date have been sprayed nearly away but are still visible. It’s all still legible.

That’ll take some shifting, I say.

Paul leads me round the Town House, where a whole side wall is bright red words inside gold. ALL ACROSS THE WORLD, WHERE WOMEN ARE DOING EXACTLY THE SAME WORK AS MEN, THEY’RE BEING PAID BETWEEN THIRTY TO FORTY PERCENT LESS. THAT’S NOT FAIR. THIS MUST CHANGE. Iphis and Ianthe the message boys 2007.

Probably Catholics, a woman says. It’s disgusting.

Aye, it’ll fair ruin the tourism, another says. Who’d be wanting to come and see the town if the town’s covered in this kind of thing? Nobody.

And we can say goodbye to winning that Britain in Bloom this year now, her friend says.

And to Antiques Roadshow ever coming back to Inverness and all, another says.

It’s a scandal! another is saying. Thirty to forty percent!

Aye well, a man next to her says. It’s no fair, right enough, if that’s true, what it says there.

Aye, but why would
boys
write
that
kind of thing on a building? a woman is saying. It’s not natural.

Too right they should, the scandal-woman says. And would you not have thought we were equal now, here, after all that stravaiging in the seventies and the eighties?

Aye, but we’re equal here, in Inverness, the first woman says.

In your dreams we’re equal, the scandal-woman says.

Nevertheless, equal or no, it’s no reason to paint it all over the Town House, the woman’s friend says.

The scandal-woman is arguing back as we walk up round the side of the Castle. In gilted red on the front wall above the Castle door it says in a jolly arc, like the name of a house painted right above its threshold, that only one percent of the world’s assets are held by women. Iphis and Ianthe the message girls 2007.

From here we can see right across the river that there are huge red words on the side of the cathedral too. I can’t see what they say, but I can make out the red.

Two million girls annually forced into marriage worldwide, Paul says seeing me straining to make it out. And on Eden Court Theatre, on the glass doors, it says that sexual or domestic violence affects one out of every three women and girls worldwide and that this is the world’s leading cause of injury and death for women.