nothing was solid, not the pavements, not the walls; everything I saw seemed created of waves, water, pure motion. I sailed along the Aldwych, around the bend in the river; paddled the shallows of Drury Lane until I reached the wide, shining expanse of Holborn. The traffic was hushed and muted, cars become gondolas; Londoners bobbed and floated towards me, buoyant despite their February clothes.
Bloomsbury Street was a rank canal, with green weeds that pulled at my ankles, impeded me, exhausted me. By the time I dripped into Montague Place, my chest was crushed, my limbs quivering: my breathing was harsh and audible. Blood roared in my ears: or maybe it was the sea?
When I swum into Tonbridge Hall, the foyer was deserted and there was no one at the reception desk. Usually I ran up the stairs to C Floor, but today I decided to use the lift. But its door was wedged open, a scrawled ‘OUT OF ORDER’ notice taped to the wood. I began to walk upstairs. A sound, a certain noise, a rhythmic noise, began to thud in my ears. Surely I must be close to the sea now; I could hear the waves, I could hear the crash and roll of breakers. I have sailed away, for a year and a day, on a boat with a skeleton crew . . .
Somewhere between B Floor and C Floor, I sat down on the stairs. Not at once, but gradually, the sound of the sea diminished; but the world remained liquid, diffuse, unstable. My bag of books floated by my side. I didn’t think I would move again; wouldn’t ever bother. Just keep my head up, butting for the necessary air.
I grew cold, very cold. After a time, I wondered if I had fallen through ice; if so, the dying was not instantaneous, as I would have expected, but ridiculously prolonged. My head at least was still above the ice-line; while my body froze I engaged my mind in debate, and my still-unfrozen mouth in badinage with would-be rescuers and passers by.
No one came, though. And time passed. Not much, perhaps; but this was early in the year, and soon there was a change, light to dark. I struggled for air, throwing out one arm to get a purchase on the banister. I gripped the wood, but my muscles had no strength any more. My hand slid away. I went under.
I had slipped beneath the sea. I had thought there would be starfish, castles of coral; I saw only wetter, deeper darkness. For a moment I fought. I wanted a spar, a piece of jetsam to save myself. But now I was drowning, and the current was tugging me away: the salt, the oil, the wrecking wave.
The next thing I heard was Karina’s voice; and when I breathed, I gulped in not water, but the hot re-used and re- circulated air I had breathed since last October. ‘Slumped on the stairs,’ she said. ‘Lucky I came along, really. She could have rolled right down and broken her neck.’ There was an interval of nothingness. I heard a door slam.
I had a dim memory of someone – it must have been Karina, I suppose – diving through the waters that had closed over my head. I remembered hands under my arms, and a terrible, implacable hauling . . . and my feet trailing after me, lifeless and numb. It was something that happened years ago, years ago when I was a child . . . so I told myself. My mouth had gaped, drowned by air; from deep inside came a wailing, panic-stricken, starved, unappeasable.
Now I was on my bed. Julia was leaning over me. She took my hand. It rose up on the end of my arm, floating into the air. She held it in hers for a long time, and felt each separate bone, so that I was hideously conscious of my own mortality.
‘Why starve?’ Lynette said. ‘You wonder.’
‘There are many reasons,’ Julia said. ‘Twisted religiosity. Poverty. Sexual disturbance. Inheritance. Zinc deficiency. Deficiency.’
‘I have honey in my room,’ Lynette said. ‘Unless Karina has eaten it.’
‘Yes, honey, that would be good. Do you have milk?’
‘No, it was off this morning, I forgot to put it out.’ I saw that Lynette was holding her purse. It was a little Italian change-purse, a draw-string bag as soft as skin, soft and puckered and weighted: she bounced it in her hand, waiting for instructions. ‘I’ll go to the milk machine on Store Street,’ she said.
‘Get two packets,’ Julia said. ‘Let’s hope she’ll keep it down.’
There was an interval of vacancy. The world might have stopped; I don’t know. The next thing I remember was that Julia was leaning over me again. She had stacked up three pillows behind me, and now she helped me to sit up, and put a mug of milk into my hand, letting go of it herself only when she was sure I had taken a grip. I began to cry. The tears were painful, as if they were washing gravel from under my eyelids. Iser, rolling rapidly.
The milk warmed in my hand. I slumped back against Julia’s enfolding arm; tentatively, as if my skull were glass, she allowed her fingers to brush my temple. They rested on my pulse point; I stopped crying. Julia patted at my eyes with a white handkerchief sewn with her initial. I took it in my fist, gripping it tightly, and blotted my own cheeks. Slowly, my vision cleared.
I looked down at my body. I saw the skeletal line of my ribs. I saw my legs like pallid twigs, ready to snap and bleed. I looked up, questioning. Lynette reached forward, and smoothed my stubbly hair. ‘Oh, Carmel,’ she said. ‘We saw it happening. At first we were pleased for you. But then, we didn’t know how to stop it.’
‘That’s all right,’ I said. My voice rasped, as if a rusty blade were in my larynx. ‘Everything’s repairable,’ I said.
And my heart slowed. The lines of poetry faded from my brain. For the first time in months my thoughts were my own; slow thoughts, falling away into nothingness. I breathed; I sipped the milk. I was a machine for breathing: a machine for living.
The milk tasted thick, almost sweet. I drank it, and slept.
ten
I woke to the sound of a shattering scream. God has turned out hell, I thought, the devils have been evicted; they are loose on the streets, they have climbed up to C Floor, they are bellowing for beds for the night.
The light snapped on, and I threw my arm up to protect my eyes; the brightness intensified the shrieking, so that I thought I would vomit or die or fall apart from the horror of it.
‘Come on!’ Julia shouted. ‘Get up! Fire practice! Bloody hell, what a night to choose.’ She was knotting the belt of her dressing-gown. ‘Come
I moved; too slowly for Julia’s taste. She crossed the room, yanked back the covers, gripped me by my upper
