Constellation

They walked back up the beach. It was so quiet they could hear the grains of sand squeaking beneath their tread, the marram grasses scratching as they crossed in the warm breath of the night, the soft hiss of the waves.

He took her hand to join him as he sat. Droplets of water gleamed on her skin like tiny pearls, and he licked at their salty glimmer.  The sand beneath them still held on to the echo of the baking afternoon, and he felt the warmth of it soaking up into his back. 

He drew her closer and kissed her, skin cold from the sea.  She was undulating, shivering beneath the stroke of his fingers, gentle curves like the dunes. They were hidden from the world behind their curtain of silence and darkness.  She was above him, her hair brushing his face as her tongue explored his, her soft breasts hanging within easy reach of his upturned hands. She moved with a sureness born of familiarity to fit herself against, over, around him. 

She smiled, the moon glinting silver in her eyes, and her head wore a halo of stars as he looked up at her. "Yes", she murmured. "Now...." he twisted his fingers into hers as he felt the heat rising, surging through them in a wave like the sea. So easy.

"These stars shine only tonight, only for you", he whispered. He had his own ways of telling her he loved her.

Voices From The Past

I conjured her.

It was unnerving, spooky. I’d read an article in the paper that inevitably made me think of her, and five minutes later I had a message to say she’d phoned the office and could she come in for a coffee.

For a moment I was afraid that they’d made the link. All it takes these days is a bit of Googling and the whole sorry story might be scrolling blackly, bleakly down the screen. Obviously there are all sorts of things that make me think of her: she was my first recruit in the company, she is my friend, I guess. I only see her occasionally nowadays but sometimes being a part of someone’s life at a critical time creates a bond that endures. Stories like this one, headlines like that, bring it all back to me with a sick jolt, so heaven knows what it must feel like for her.


I was down in town and couldn’t meet her, so I rang to arrange for next week. She remembered a couple of books we had at the office, wanted to know if she could come in and borrow them. A reason? Or an excuse? I didn’t ask on the phone. Didn’t say, “Are you ok? How do you cope with all that stuff in the papers, on the TV?” I didn’t ask, because I didn’t want her to think that’s the only thing about her. I didn’t ask, because I don’t know what to say.

It’s easier, sort of, to talk about it now than it was at the time. “How are you getting on? How’s the job? How is your daughter getting on at Senior School?” Lots of ways to ask whether things are ok. But of course they will never be completely ok, after something like that.


I haven’t Googled her, the case, the discussions in the papers. I already know everything. I have the press cuttings, in her personnel file. It’s the only one that I keep locked in the safe, in an envelope sealed with security tape. I wouldn’t read about it again, it was hard enough the first time. My fear now, every time there’s a similar story in the papers, is that someone will decide to write an in-depth feature, dig everything up, drag it all out, talk about her story, track her down.

She and I both know that she lied on the application form for the job she has now as a top flight secretary in a well known firm, and I lied on her reference. I said she worked for us for longer than she did. So did she. And in that other part of the form, I told her: just lie. Tick no. Take a chance. She joined them before the days of Google. It happened in a different town. She’s probably not the only person in Britain with that name. She’s been there twelve years now. It doesn't affect her ability to do her job today. It’s none of their damn business.


I don’t think they’d see it like that though. It’s a hard thing to get to grips with.


When I’d interviewed her, I saw straight away there was a gap in her CV. What happened here? “I had a baby”, she looked down, “and the baby died”. Embarrassed, upset, I moved swiftly on to skills and experience. 

She was a great PA. Calm, confident, capable. A sweet girl, kind and friendly, smiley and gentle. So when she phoned me, on her day’s leave, and asked me to come into the office for a meeting with her that evening, I was a bit confused but wandered down about 6pm.


She was there with her partner, both all suited and booted. That worried me. I thought perhaps she was going to make some sort of complaint. “There’s something I want to talk to you about”. I had that feeling, when you know that whatever is coming isn’t going to be good, isn’t going to be something I want to hear. In a small company there’s no HR department to pick up this stuff, unfortunately.

I sat down. “We’ve been at the Old Bailey today”, she said. Oh shit. I waited.

“I told you I had a baby, and my baby died”. Oh god. “I was ill with post-natal depression and I killed my baby, and I’ve been on trial today”. Oh fuck.


I realised my mouth had literally fallen open so I closed it, gulped. I knew enough to ask the next question. “What was the charge?” “Infanticide”.


Small mercies. Not murder.

“I was on bail when I came to work here. I should have declared that when I applied, but I knew no one would employ me and I needed a job. I love this job”.

The trial was over. She had been convicted of infanticide. The judge said it was one of the saddest cases he had ever seen. She had been put on probation. I had the right to terminate her employment. Firstly because she had lied on her application, secondly because she had been convicted of a Category A offence.

“ I needed to tell you straight away because it will be in all the newspapers, tonight and tomorrow. I won’t come to work tomorrow, I’ll wait to hear from you, tell me what you want to do. My solicitor said you might want to prepare a statement in case the press get in touch”.


I felt utterly out of my depth. She went home. I went home. She was the first item on the news. She was the front page of the Standard: Baby Killer Walks Free. An unrecognisable photograph, her face twisted in pain but it looked like a sneer.


She had a complicated pregnancy and a long difficult labour ending in an emergency Caesarean. These are factors in the development of post-natal psychosis. She had never suffered from any mental health problems or depression before. She was a successful, top-flight international PA, longing for a baby. After the birth, she felt weird straight away. Odd, detached, as if she was at the bottom of a deep dark well. She tried to explain this. She asked to see a psychiatrist. She saw her GP. She took the baby back to hospital and said she couldn’t look after it. She took the baby to her GP’s surgery and left it there, because she was afraid she didn’t know what to do, and she felt like she was having a breakdown. A health visitor came to see her, and she couldn’t speak, just cried silently. The health visitor told her husband not to worry, it was just the baby blues and organised a prescription for Prozac to be collected the next day.


He went to the pub with a colleague, one drink, half an hour, wet the baby’s head. While he was out, she killed the baby and then tried to kill herself.

I wanted to feel sympathy, to understand. I wasn’t a parent myself at the time, but I’m a kind person, she’s a nice girl...... I couldn’t believe it. I tried to picture her, pressing a pillow to quieten her crying baby.

But when I read the press cuttings it wasn’t like that. She had picked him up by the feet and swung him hard into the wall, several times. Severed an artery in her wrists. Thrown herself down the stairs.



She was in a secure hospital for a few months. She can’t remember much about it. When she surfaced, she couldn’t understand what had happened. Neither can anyone else. The judge said there was no need for the court to impose further punishment  beyond that which she already suffered. He still writes to her now.


I think I cried for the whole weekend without pause.

I spoke to her psychiatrist. Someone who has recovered from post-natal psychosis is no more likely to be dangerous than anyone else. It could happen to anybody. She was ill, not evil. I kept her on in the job, I guaranteed I would keep her until her probation was completed. No one contacted us, they didn’t seem to track her to our town.


She has another daughter now. She’s a lovely mum. Her little girl is eleven.

I don’t want it all to come back up for her.

Violation

"Why don't you go out for one of your walks?" he said.

I didn't really like the one-of-your-walks thing, but I thought I'd accept the offer. He would look after the girls, I would stroll along the towpath of a beautiful French canal. I bit my lip a little, smiled and put my on my new trainers.

Six miles later I was feeling great. Peace, quiet, thinking time. Birdsong, the wind rustling the chestnut trees.  However, when I got back, there was An Atmosphere. Hardly an unusual situation, and I was chilled and mellow, so I cheerily breezed through the evening as if everything was fine.  The Atmosphere continued for most of the rest of the holiday, so I cheerily breezed into the spare room and everything continued to be just dandy. You know how it goes.

Doing my timesheets, looking at my Outlook Journal, I now discover that while I was merrily tramping along the canal bank, he looked at every single document on my laptop. Every single one.

It's my belief that in a relationship, even when hostilities have broken out, there is still a kind of understanding, a Geneva Convention, around the rules of engagement.  And I think systematically going through the computer breaches that.   I'm not a snooper, I've got too much respect for people's privacy. I don't open his post, look at his phone, read his emails. And he knows that ever since my mother cut the lock off my diary with boltcutters (there's a story....) I am obsessive about the right to privacy. We've talked about this a lot in regard to the girls, I assumed it was taken as read that it applied across the board.

I asked him why. He came up with some bullshit explanation about the fact he'd never expressed any interest in my writing and that I'd been disappointed  about that.  This did not wash with me, nor explain why one or two documents had been open repeatedly.  He had a slightly triumphant air about him when I asked about this specifically. I pointed out that they were in a folder called Writing/Drafts and therefore to set any store by the events they describe would be as much of a mistake as to believe I am a time traveller whose two boys were killed in a air-raid in WW2, or the reincarnation of a little girl who used to sleep in the elephant house.

I was cold, angry. Icily furious.  I still am.

It's not that I have anything to hide. Not on my work laptop where half a dozen people have the password and I leave it around at home all the time, at any rate.

What should I do? I don't feel that I should just let this pass. But I don't know what the appropriate response would be. Hmmm.

Reflecting Men At Twice Their Natural Size

I don’t suppose young women read books like this any more. Feminists are probably bracketed together with suffragettes and anti-slavery campaigners in their minds. Women from olden times who fought for freedoms that we all take for granted now.

But damn, we still do it, even those of us who were righteously steeped in the doctrines of the sisterhood. I feel like a character from the opening chapters of The Women’s Room when I’m doing the family laundry while they relax upstairs. I know Fat Is A Feminist Issue, but I’m still fat, right? I understand The Beauty Myth and how women are objectified, but I still feel good in lipstick and heels. And I know that reflecting men at twice their natural size perpetuates some situations that are unhelpful, both individually and socially.

Let me give you a for-instance. He is medium height. Not ridiculously short, but not tall either. Sometimes he has mentioned that he is not tall, so I divine he has a sensitivity about this. Without ever discussing it, without even consciously thinking it, I buy low to medium height shoes, so he is always a good margin tall than I. Knowing that he feels my ridiculous porn-starlet breasts make him look unprofessional (another whole story there, for another day...) I have been used to wearing minimiser bras to squash them down, and loose tops to draw attention away. Unmentioned and unacknowledged, I replace his worn socks with new ones, take his suits to the cleaners and buy new shirts when the old ones fray on the collar. I wrote a whole series of best practice articles that were published under his name, as I thought that would be better for the company brand.

And I ask myself suddenly: what kind of a sucker am I?

I feel like I’ve only just woken up to life. I’m starting small, with a new Tits-and-Heels wardrobe and leaving him to look after his own clothes. But who knows where it will end?

Gift

“I hate country and western”, I stated with absolute certainty.


He looked at me disbelievingly. “You haven’t been listening to the right recordings”.


Damn right. I haven’t been listening to any of it, any time, no way, no how. Rawhide. Dolly and her freakish breasts. Kenny Rogers and his Coward of the County. Bleargh. Yawn. No no no.


“You could like it”. He spoke with authority, and perhaps there was even at hint of the patronising there, as if we were speaking about Shakespeare or Wagner. I felt slightly irritated. After all, he hardly knew me.


I mentioned some of the music I enjoyed and it drew a blank. So I threw down the gauntlet. “Ok then. Find me something I like.” He raised an eyebrow and the conversation moved on.


Later, much later, he sent me a song: Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Sudden Gift of Fate. I loved it. I told him. Then he sent me another one, Late For Your Life, with a rather cryptic note. I listened - and I realised that he had the measure of me better than I thought. So much for my mystery. I’m off to buy a new CD.

Canal d'Ille-et-Rance

Mist hangs above the surface of water. The crunch of towpath gravel is deadened in the pools of shade where the sweet-smelling catkins of the chestnut trees are soft under my feet. Plush yellow fingers of flowers are drifted into fluffy mounds, like the fringe of chenille on a grandmother’s curtains - and I recall from nowhere that the French word chenille is a caterpillar.

Fish rise to catch the early morning flies in their thick lips, then plop back lazily into the water. I see no one, hear nothing except the song of birds, the rustle of leaves, the splash of the carp and the rhythm of my walk. I am quietly amongst my thoughts. The magnificent grey granite tower of Evran church is behind me now. The view of Treverien against a lightly clouded sky, reflected in the still surface is a perfect painting.

I turn. “Look!” I marvel. But there is nobody here to tell.

Absent

Forties

All we have in common these days is our misery. Nothing to say that we have not already said a thousand times. Two thousand, perhaps, by now. Tired, stale arguments we draw out from the bottom of the grudge-bag, soft and limp like dirty five pound notes, worn from too many weary transactions. Such is the currency of a relationship.

How can doing the right thing feel so wrong? And while we're wondering, how can doing the wrong thing feel so right? The secret joy of coming home to an empty house, the bed to oneself, solitary sexual adventures. The beige disappointment of an attempted evening together, reading in parallel, an early night without the delights that might imply for other couples, the silence heavy like a woollen cloak. Such is the paradox of a relationship.

The hurly-burly of the chaise-longue is surely better than the deep, deep peace of the living death? Or something like that. Joy is to be found these days in the most unlikely of places, but the search is worthwhile. Take away the parental glow and there would be precious little warmth otherwise - even flaming June will chill you if you do not have someone to hold you tight. Fires of passion or a cold shoulder? The choices we make are a matter of survival. Every man for himself, and every woman too. Such is the territory of a relationship.