her again, harder this time. He used his knuckles and admired the red bruising they brought to her skin.
She was weeping and ugly. Her mouth hung open. Her eyes squeezed shut. Mucous dripped from her nose. He liked her that way. He wanted her weeping. Her terror was a drug. He shoved her legs apart and he fell upon her. He celebrated her punishment like the god he was.
She thought, This is what it’s like to die. She lay as he had left her, one leg crooked and the other extended, her pullover shoved up beneath her armpits, her bra jerked down to bare one breast where his bite still throbbed like a brand. A sheer piece of nylon edged with lace—“Got yerself some fancies I see,” Rita had chuckled. “Looking for a bloke who likes it wrapped up pretty?”—looped round her left ankle. A shredded ribbon of skirt draped across her neck.
She stared upwards and followed the threading of a crack that began above the door and spread out like veins against the skin of the ceiling. Somewhere in the house a metallic crank-rattle sounded, followed by a whirring that was steady and low. The boiler, she thought. She wondered why it was heating water since she couldn’t recall having used any that day. She pondered everything she had done in the vicarage, taking each project one step at a time because it seemed so important to know why the boiler was heating water right now. It couldn’t realise, after all, how filthy she was. It was just a machine. Machines didn’t anticipate a body’s needs.
She made a list. Newspapers first. She’d bound them up like she’d promised herself and discarded them all in the rubbish bin. She’d phoned and cancelled the subscription as well. Potted plants next. There were only four of them, but they were looking poorly and one had lost nearly all of its leaves. She’d been giving them water religiously every day, so she couldn’t understand why they were turning all yellow. She’d taken them to the rear garden and set them on the porch, thinking the poor little things might like some sun, if it ever came out which it hadn’t. Bedding after that. She’d changed the sheets on all three beds— two singles, one double — just like she’d been doing every week since she’d first come to work. Didn’t make any difference that no one used the beds. One had to change the linen to keep it fresh. But she hadn’t done any laundry, so the boiler shouldn’t be at work over that. What was it, then?
She tried to picture each of her movements that day. She tried to make them appear among the cracks in the ceiling. Newspapers. Telephone. Plants on the porch. And after that…It was too much effort to think beyond the plants. Why? Was it water? Was she frightened of water? Had something happened with water? No, how silly. Think of rooms with water.
She remembered. She smiled but it hurt because her skin felt stiff like glue had dried upon it so she hurried in her mind from the bedrooms to the kitchen. Because that was it. She’d washed all the dishes, the glassware, the pots, and the pans. She’d scrubbed the cupboards as well. Which is why the boiler was working now. And anyway, didn’t a boiler always work? Didn’t it fire itself up when it felt the water inside start to cool? No one switched it on. It just worked. Like magic.
Magic. The book. No. She must have no thoughts like that. They painted nightmare pictures in the back of her head. She didn’t want to see.
The kitchen, the kitchen, she thought. Washing dishes and cupboards and then on to the sitting room which was already clean and tidy as could be but she polished the furniture because she couldn’t seem to make herself leave this place, let go, find another way to live, and then he was with her. And his face wasn’t right. His back seemed too stiff. His arms didn’t hang, they just waited.
Polly rolled to her side, drew her legs up, and tried to cradle herself. Hurts, she thought. Her legs felt torn away from her body. A hammer pounded down low where he’d slammed and slammed her. And inside, acid burned at her flesh. She felt throbbing and scraped. She was nothing.
Slowly, she became aware of the cold, a thin current of air that fl owed insistently against her bare skin. She shivered. She realised he’d left the inner door open upon his leaving, and the outer door was not completely latched. Her fingers plucked aimlessly at the pullover, and she tried to work it down as a cover, but she got it no farther than beneath her breasts before giving up. It didn’t feel right. The wool abraded her skin.
From where she lay she could see the stairway, and she began to inch towards it with no thought in mind but to get out of the draught, to find somewhere safe that was dark. But once she rested her head on the bottom stair, she looked up and the light seemed brighter at the top. She thought, Bright means warm, better than dark. It was getting late, but the sun must have come out one final time. It would be a winter sun — milky and distant— but if it fell on the carpet in one of the bedrooms, she could curl within its golden boundaries and let her dying continue there.
She began to climb. She found she couldn’t manage her legs, so she pulled herself up, hand over hand on the banister. Her knees bumped on the stairs. When she lolled to one side, her hip thudded against the wall which is how she saw the blood. She interrupted her progress to look at it curiously, to touch a fi nger to its crimson smear, marvelling at how quickly it was able to dry, and how it turned to mahogany when mixed with air. She saw that it was oozing from between her legs, and that it had been oozing quite long enough to create palmate patterns on her inner thighs and crooked rivulets down one leg.
Dirty, she thought. She would have to bathe.
The idea of washing inflated in her mind, driving the nightmare pictures away. Holding on to the thought of water and its warmth, she made it to the top of the stairs and crawled to the bath. She shut the door and sat on the cold white tile with her head against the wall, her knees drawn up, and the blood seeping out against the fist she pressed between her legs.
After a moment, she rolled her shoulders against the wall, flipped herself two feet, and thus gained the tub. She lowered her head to its side and reached one hand to the tap. Her fingers grappled with it, failed to make it turn, and slipped off altogether.
She knew somehow she’d be whole again if she could only wash. If she could wash off the scent of him and scrub away the touch of his hands, if the soap could cleanse the inside of her mouth. And as long as she could think about washing — what it would feel like, how the water would rise to her breasts, how long she would lie in the tub and just dream — she wouldn’t have to think about anything else. If she could only make the water run.
She reached again for the tap. Again she failed. She was doing it by feel because she didn’t want to open her eyes and have to see herself in the mirror that she knew was hanging on the back of the bathroom door. If she saw the mirror, she would have to think, and she was determined not to think again. Except about washing.
She’d get into the tub and never come out, just letting the water rise and fall. She’d watch its bubbles, she’d listen to its flow. She’d feel it glide between her fi ngers and toes. She’d love it, hold it, be good to it. That’s what she’d do.
Only, nothing was forever, not even the washing, and when it was over she would have to feel, which is the one thing she didn’t want to do, didn’t want to face, didn’t want to live through. Because this was dying no matter what she pretended, this was the real ending of things. How funny to think she’d always expected it to come in old age with her lying in a bed all snowy with linens and her grandchildren there and someone who loved her holding her hand so she wouldn’t do her leaving all alone. She saw now that it was all about being alone in the first place, living was. And if living was all about being alone, dying wouldn’t be anything different.
She could deal with that. Dying alone. But only if it was here and now. Because then it would be over. She wouldn’t have to get up, get into the water, wash him away, and walk out the door. She’d never have to make her way home — oh Goddess, the long walk — and face her mother. More, she would never have to see him, never have to look in his eyes, and never remember over and over, like a fi lm running back and forth in her brain, the moment when she knew he was going to hurt her.
I don’t know what it means to love anyone, she realised. I thought it was goodness, a wanting to share. I thought it meant like you hold out your hand and someone takes it, holds it hard, and pulls you safe from the river. You talk. You tell him bits of yourself. You say here’s where I hurt and you give it to him and he holds it and gives you where he hurts in return and you hold it and that’s how you learn to love. You lean where he’s strong. He leans where you’re strong. And there’s a joining somewhere. But it’s not like this, not like it was today, here, in this house, it’s not like this.
That was the worst of it, the filth of loving him that no amount of washing could cleanse. Even through the terror, even in the instant when she knew exactly what he meant to do, even when she begged him not to and he did it anyway — ramming her, tearing her fl esh from her flesh, and leaving her lying like used rags on the floor — the worst was that he was the man she loved. And if the man she loved could know that she loved him and still do this to her and grunt with the pleasure of showing her who would dominate and who would submit, then what she had thought was love was nothing. Because it seemed to her that if you loved someone and if he knew you loved
