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| ISBN-13: | 9781907461026 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Legend Times Group |
| Publication date: | 11/19/2005 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 368 |
| File size: | 521 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Fragile
By Jae Watson
Legend Times Ltd
Copyright © 2009 Jae WatsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-907461-02-6
CHAPTER 1
November 1983
People don't walk in straight lines. This thought returned to Beth Swann over and over again that day; she even found herself whispering the words until they became a nagging motif; an insane soliloquy. She was staring out of her third floor office window at the dark figures weaving their way through Williamson Square. What strange creatures, she thought; backs hunched against the winter wind, some walking purposefully, only swerving to avoid collision with other strange creatures; some turning on the spot, eyes raised towards street signs with brows drawn into puzzlement. The wind lifted hats and teased strands of loose hair; it tore at several stray pages of the Liverpool Echo, whipping them into a frenzied dance around dark columns of legs.
Beth had once read that when running from danger, we have a tendency to turn left, eventually returning to our own starting point. We don't walk in straight lines; we make patterns – curves, zigzags, messy diagonals, great flourishes, tight circles – and each line in the pattern is fragile and mutable; it can easily be shattered, or be sent careering off course. She wondered if, at the end of our lives, we could see the patterns we've made and what they would tell us about the sort of person we have been, the kind of life we have lived.
It was on this same day in November 1983 that a single sperm battered its way into one of Beth's last frail eggs. All morning she'd visualised the sperm's journey, hoping that its route would be straight and determined so that it could accomplish its mission before being swept, defeated, from the hostile environment of the cervical canal. Unconsciously, her hand dropped to her abdomen and she tore her eyes away from the scene in the square, back to the work on her desk.
She shuffled a pile of papers and randomly selected one sheet, covered in messy scrawl, and placed it on a stand in front of her. From another pile she lifted a virgin piece of A4 and slid it expertly into the typewriter so that the top was perfectly in line. She stared at the blank sheet for several minutes, thinking about her life and how it had turned out. She whispered a barely audible 'Gosh!' as reality finally bit.
Not only the reality of what she'd done but the fact that not one single person in the office, or in her life for that matter, knew that on the previous lunchtime, rather than cut diagonally across the square to Sayers where she usually sat alone in the functional caferia eating an egg and cress sandwich with a cup of strong tea, she'd made a great sweeping curve in the opposite direction. Nor did they know that she'd popped into a clinic, a hunched, grey building, where the sperm of an anonymous donor had been injected high into her vagina using a large syringe. The procedure had caused mild discomfort and some embarrassment but Beth was able to shut her mind off from what was happening down below and focus on six, dull strip-lights set in a yellowing ceiling. After only a ten-minute rest she slipped off the bed to make room for the next customer.
She still had time to pop into Sayers for a sandwich on the way back to the office. She sat all afternoon, legs crossed, imagining the sperm swimming with all their might up her fallopian tubes; she had chosen an athlete from the discrepant list of donors to give the sperm the best chance of success. Now she just had to wait.
After work, Beth waited outside a flaking red telephone box, stamping and shuffling against the wind; her home telephone was on the blink, yet again. Once inside the narrow cubicle she took shallow breaths so as not to inhale the smells of ash and urine and last night's curry and chips. She allowed the phone to ring fifteen times before placing it back in its cradle. She felt the need to tell someone what she'd done and Jack was the only person she thought would understand. She felt mildly annoyed that he didn't answer, imagining he was out with some new woman, gallivanting under the bright lights of London where he'd moved six months earlier.
She left the phone box and jumped on an 86 bus, climbing to the top deck and claiming the front seat. As they moved away from the city centre she leant her head against the window, absently taking in the scene and was overcome with weariness. For the first time Beth noticed the shabbiness of her city; it was as if something had shifted in her so that she could stand back, look at things anew. In the 60's Liverpool had been the apple of England's eye, but the media, which had once loved and courted her, simply could not get enough of her, now painted her as a slag, a thief, a scallywag. This angered Beth; she knew the reputation was largely undeserved, although she did know there were things wrong with her city, very wrong. She thought again of her father's words – she'd been thinking about her parents a lot lately – and one of his oft repeated mantras in her childhood, 'Hamburg managed to get back on its feet after the war, why not Liverpool; it's still a bloody bomb site.' She'd dismissed his words as the moans of the older generation but now, years later, Beth felt that Liverpool had indeed had its day. The docks were practically dead, the music scene was limping towards the brighter lights of Manchester and the population was in exodus. Last year at least two more cinemas had closed down, including the Futurist on Lime Street, one of Beth's favourites and the scene of her first kiss with Jack.
She jumped off the bus on Smithdown Road, pulled her black trench coat around her and bent her head into the wind as she made the short walk to Brookdale Road, where she was renting a small Victorian terrace until she could afford to buy again. She felt a sense of relief as she shut the front door against the night and breathed in familiar smells: an underlying odour of damp and hints of other people's habits living under layers of wallpaper. While she'd hated these smells when she first moved in and had made every effort to remove them with bleach and lemon air freshener, it had proved impossible. Now she subconsciously found the smells comforting.
Once inside, Beth hung up her scarf and coat and kicked off a sturdy pair of brown brogues. She turned the kitchen radio to BBC4 and was greeted by the mild voices of upper middle England. She pulled courgettes and onions, tinned tomatoes and rice from various cupboards and without much thought prepared one of her standard menus – a rotating mix of vegetables, stir-fried and spooned onto a steaming bed of either rice or pasta, along with sharp, tomatoey sauces sprinkled with dried herbs. While Beth loved food she found the daily preparation of meals a burden. Jack had been the better cook and it was at meal times that Beth was reminded most fiercely of his absence. She grabbed a bottle of red wine and then remembered she shouldn't drink. She felt disappointed, realising it was the wine that made the food palatable.
After eating, she turned off the radio and retired to the sitting room where she turned on the TV. She felt a pressing need to switch off from life. I might be pregnant; I might be pregnant. The thought was persistent and she didn't want to think anymore. Unfortunately it was a bad TV night and she became tired of getting up and down to change channel on her dying black and white portable.
After an hour, she switched it off and looked to her album collection for distraction. She filed through Joan Baez, Carole King and Joni Mitchell but was wary of exposing herself to the beautiful cries of wounded women. She hovered over Dylan but finally succumbed to Badfinger. That morning she'd heard on the radio that one of the band members, Tom Evans, had been found hanging in his garden. She was shaken by the news. She'd had a thing for Tom Evans since first seeing him at the Cavern in 1966 and news of his death evoked all sorts of complex emotions in her. He hadn't even left a suicide note, the least you would expect from someone who wrote the haunting lyrics of Without You. It seemed a strange coincidence that Tom Evans had ended his life on the day of the insemination. Despite considering herself to be a rational person, Beth allowed her mind to dwell on this thought, imagining there might be some serendipity in it.
'Stupid woman,' she immediately reproached herself, 'What's got into you?" But it was too late; these quixotic daydreams had already led her to thoughts of Jack. She was surprised to find herself crying. 'Oh Jack,'she said aloud. 'What ever happened to us?"
CHAPTER 2In the beginning there was neither male nor female, only a 'round' creature with four arms, four legs and two faces looking different ways but joined at the top to make a single head. There were three 'sexes,' if we can call them so, of these creatures: the double male, double female and the male-female; the first derived from the sun, the second from the earth and the third from the moon, which is at once a 'luminary' and an 'earth.' But as yet there was no sexual love and no sexual generation. The race procreated itself by a literal fertilisation of the soil. These creatures were as masterful as they were strong and threatened to storm heaven ... As a measure of safety Zeus split them longitudinally down the middle and reconstructed them so that their method of propagation should henceforth be sexual. Since then man is only half a complete creature and each half goes about with a passionate longing to find its complement and coalesce with it again. This longing for reunion with the lost half of one's original self is what we call 'love' and until it is satisfied none of us can find happiness ... if we continue in irreligion it is to be feared that Zeus may split us again, and leave us to hop on one leg, with one arm and half a face.
(Plato's Symposium c 385 BC)
"I still miss Beth." Jack Berry felt the oddness of telling his story to a stranger. "She's part of my life, always will be."
"So why do you think you left her?"
"She couldn't accept all that I am. God that sounds pretentious, doesn't it?"
The therapist didn't rise to the question.
"And what are you, Jack?"
Jack had to think for a minute.
"I'm not sure. I don't know if I'm a product of nature or nurture."
"Perhaps we can come back to that." the therapist nodded slowly. "Where did you meet?"
Jack wasn't sure if Cassandra was being over-curious or if her question had some significance.
"I believe first meetings are important," she said, as if reading his mind, "They tell us a great deal."
Jack wasn't sure what she meant but this was their second session and he was confident she knew her stuff.
He said, "At the Cavern Club in Liverpool. It was 1970."
Cassandra's eyes widened and Jack thought she slid forward slightly on her seat so that her voluminous dress slipped a little further up her calves. It was a nice dress, though a bit flowery for his liking; he guessed Laura Ashley.
"The Cavern!" Cassandra's face suddenly looked young and eager. Jack imagined her youth had been spent largely in the pursuit of knowledge and a good career; as a result she'd become a rather serious and sensible person. Perhaps she was living her life vicariously through the compelling and slightly sordid lives of her clients.
Jack said "I got the nights wrong."
"What do you mean?"
"I wanted to see Wishbone Ash but they'd played on the Monday. I think I have a habit of missing boats." Jack let out a short laugh. "Instead I went on the Thursday. I remember the date because Beth likes ... liked to remember the anniversary of our first meeting. 5th February 1970. Anyway, one of Beth's favourite bands was playing; she was infatuated with the bass player. She told me later I reminded her of him." Jack smiled at the thought of this girlish trait in the otherwise very grown-up Beth. "I was only seventeen."
"And Beth?"
"Beth was twenty-four."
"So, quite a big age gap?"
"I guess so, but it didn't seem to matter at the time."
Another flush of interest was sparked in Cassandra, who had a keen interest in why we choose our partners.
"And what attracted you to Beth?"
"She reminded me of my mother." Jack wished he hadn't said this; he was only playing into Cassandra's hands and her obsession with all things Freudian. In fact, he'd never thought about it before, but he suddenly realised it contained some truth.
Cassandra nodded, her eyes skating upwards, left, towards the ceiling, as if remembering something, or putting two and two together. She has nice eyes, thought Jack, even if her face is a little plain. It was curiosity that made her eyes so attractive.
"Beth was a backslidden Mod," Jack continued. "At that time the Cavern was split into two – basement and ground level. You had to walk through all these growling Mods to get to the hippy scene in the basement, really weird. I saw this woman who stood still for me in the crowd: warm eyes, warm smile. She looked ... safe. She had silky blond hair and lovely brown eyes. I offered to buy her a drink. Elizabeth Swann. Such a beautiful name; it kind of flies off the tongue. But she hated the name Elizabeth, and I think she preferred to be a duckling rather than a swan." Jack chuckled at his own joke. "She was just such a lovely, genuine person. I felt instantly at home with her."
"At home, that's an interesting way of putting it."
"I suppose I just felt comfortable with her. She was very accepting."
"Of you or of everything?"
Jack paused before answering. It was a good question. He realised this was part of the problem. He'd married Beth because she was accepting of him; he'd divorced her because she was accepting of everything. She didn't challenge him, but neither did she embrace all that he was; it was a passive thing, her acceptance.
"Both. She was the most grounded person I'd ever met. I proposed to her a year later. Or rather we agreed to get married. She doesn't really like all that proposal stuff. 'Archaic sexist twaddle' she called it."
"Did she know then about your ... preferences?" A blush momentarily brightened Cassandra's face. Jack wondered if she'd be able to deal with his story.
"I told her before we married."
"Immediately before or some time before?" Jack sensed personal judgement slip into Cassie's question and he realised the impossibility of finding an impartial listener.
"Two weeks after we were engaged," he said, without compromise and then, trying to balance the statement in his favour, he added. "I was only nineteen. You can be really selfish at that age, can't you? I thought she could love me enough to accept it. I suppose it was slightly better than waiting until afterwards. That would have been less fair."
Cassandra didn't look convinced. "How did Beth respond?" "She laughed at first. I'm not sure if she found the idea funny or if she just didn't believe me."
"Or perhaps it made her feel uneasy."
Jack thought it probably made Cassie feel uneasy. "Perhaps. Anyway, I tried to convince her I would change ... for her. And I meant it.'
"Didn't she ask any questions?"
"No, nothing, she just kissed me as if I'd told her I had an incurable illness and she wanted me to know she'd always be there. I feel guilty now thinking about it, but I did genuinely believe I could overcome my ... perversion, as I saw it back then, with the help of Beth's love."
"But you couldn't."
"No. I couldn't."
* * *
Jack decided to make the long walk home from the leafy reaches of Highgate, with its babble of psychoanalysts, to the shabby grandeur of Stoke Newington with its underworld of artists and dropouts. Jack knew where he belonged, but it was still nice to travel up to the elegant sweep of Cholmeley Park once a week, to get fixed. The walk gave him time to think about the session and shake off some of the sadness that often accompanied the slow raking up of the past. At the same time he knew the painful process was somehow essential to his wellbeing.
It was a cool evening and the dark, moonless sky wrapped itself tenderly around the city. He walked along Hornsey Lane and over the elaborate cast iron arch, with its dramatic drop down to Archway Road, where Jack knew many people had over the years ended their lives. The therapy obviously hadn't worked for them.
He stopped to admire the view across London, looking southeast over the city and the river to the wasteland running eight miles east of Tower Bridge, the Isle of Dogs and London Docklands. There's nothing sadder, thought Jack, than an area once so vital lying waste. He continued to weave through streets that became significantly less affluent as he dropped down to Finsbury Park. He cut through Clissold Park to Church Street and was relieved to finally reach a deep blue door in Carysfort Road, the place he'd called home for the past six months. He momentarily wished he wasn't living in a shared house, but then he thought of Maddie and his heart responded.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Fragile by Jae Watson. Copyright © 2009 Jae Watson. Excerpted by permission of Legend Times Ltd.
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