dddk 5 - for closure

“How the bloody hell am I supposed to know how many people are using this place? Just look at it. What does Dan expect me to do, count the cardboard boxes? Bloody shit hole. How can they live like this? There’s no-one…Not a soul.

Roll up, roll up, come on folks step right this way. You sir, have you even considered the life enhancing possibilities that could be yours with just one single visit to the St. Johns Centre? Come and get your art therapy here, come along now ladies and gentlemen, don’t be shy…

God my leg is aching. You know it hurts like it was still there. Rather like Charlotte. I don’t suppose I’ve ever really got around to mourning it. Now that would be something to put in a wooden box and bury. Rather like Charlotte. But then she hurts like she’s still there.

In saving my life, the nine miracle workers at St. Thomas’ Hospital cut away my left leg whilst simultaneously ripping out the perfect stillness that should have been my Charlotte.

A miracle.

Of course no-one should have walked – well limped – from the mangled planes that had once been my Ford Laguna. I am one very lucky woman. And you Keith are one very lucky man. Well that’s what I’m supposed to believe isn't it?

Look at that doll. How could you bring a child down here? It makes you want to cry. These poor stupid people…I cry, so does Keith. We cry as we rebound from one freshly redecorated room to the next in our three bed town house with garden; as it drags us further and further under. Of course Keith had never wanted to buy it in the first place. But I’d told him, “You are going to be a father Keith, it’s time to grow up and accept the responsibility.”

Keith doesn’t understand this need I have to change things. You know, colour schemes, paintings, the furniture. I’ve tried rearranging, but it’s just never quite right. Except Charlotte’s room. That’s perfect. When I found out she was going to be a girl I just couldn’t help myself; straight to the Laura Ashley catalogue. Cream and old rose. Lots of white wood; polished pale oak parquet, beautiful French nursing chair in the corner…Thick wool rugs... When Keith and I wind up yet another séance of retribution and recrimination I generally end up there. I say it’s perfect, but I do find that my eyes are constantly drawn to that same empty space in front of the double bay window. I was thinking maybe a captains chest but, it’s the one detail I’ve been hesitating over. Waiting maybe.

He goes back to his aquarium. How can a grown man spend so much time with a fish tank?

He’s been seeing someone of course, we both have; but I can’t really see the good it’s done. That said, I suppose he must have got the idea from somewhere. He came bouncing in on Tuesday night, clutching another bulging fishfull plastic bag. “I’ll just get these chaps installed and then I wanted a word about this weekend.” He’d said. This weekend…The weekend of truth and reconciliation he’d called it. All arranged it was – borrowed his parents cottage in Hove – we could go down on Friday night and come back on Monday. A total break and a chance to thrash it all out in an ambivalent setting. Alright, ok. What else could I say really?

Friday night was appalling. The traffic was snarled from Croydon to Crawley and then the creeping panics as soon as we hit the M23. The house was cold and its damp mustiness caught in the back of my throat. I can not abide that smell. I finally found sleep; teetering at the very limit of the unconsciously demarked no go zone that throbbed at the heart of my in-laws Queen Anne bed.

Saturday was better. We drove straight into Brighton and had breakfast in a gorgeous little backstreet café. The rich eggy yellow of the limed walls combined with toasted cream cheese and salmon bagels sent us bursting out onto the front with a renewed sense of something.

I like the look of a pebbled beach, hard on the legs though. We wandered in a peculiarly amiable silence. Keith bought me a candyfloss on the pier and we sat on a bench and watched families stream past.

When we got back to the cottage I opened a bottle of good Bordeaux while Keith lit the fire. We sat for a while in an aching silence and then it overflowed. It roared. It screamed. It spat.

“You were supposed to have taken me," Slap. “you should have been driving." Slap. "You blew us out." Slap. Nothing left to throw. Slap. “I murdered my baby.”

He held me so tightly, and as I wailed into moans he kissed my face all over.

“You blame me as you use me,” he whispered. “You take away my child and then you hold me, bound in your mean solipsistic web, feeding me with flaky scraps of temperature chart and ovulation timetable. You push me further as you bind me tighter. Decorating me out of every blank wall…You blame me as you use me.” He heaved a shuddering moan. I leaned into him, licked tears, bit his cheek ferociously and he slapped back, hard. We twisted and panted on the Indian silk rug in front of the fire. “You want me to give you my baby?” He hammered, “do you deserve my baby?”

“Yes,” banshee, “yes, yes, yes.”

I can say in total honesty that Sunday was probably one of the best days of my life. Waking up tangled, damp and yeah, happy. My leg lay on the floor and I caressed the sweetest memory of his hot tongue exploring the ridges and crevasses of my scarred and empty hip joint. We followed a languorous and winey pizza with a stroll around the lanes. Maybe I hadn’t done the straps up tight enough, maybe the unevenness of the cobblestones? I like to think it was serendipity, but I had to stop to ease the rubbing. That’s when I saw it; the last detail. It shone out at me. A Victorian wooden horse sitting centre stage in the elaborate window display of an imposing antique shop. Glistening, his heavily varnished eye held all the sadness of the world; the tears of generations trapped, held in stasis, by the finely hewn solidity of tree. He was pain and he was strength. And I had to have him.

“There’s no price tag,” Keith muttered as I dragged him into the shop. “It’ll cost a fortune.” “An arm and a leg probably.” I laughed. Of course it cost a fortune, but he saw the lights dancing. How could he refuse that? I had to stop him trying to pay with his card. “I’ll put it on the house account,” I said, and as he wandered off to study a series of Edwardian etchings I rifled through the little mountain of plastic in my stodgy wallet. I slowly released the monoxide heavy air I’d not even noticed I’d been holding, as the transaction passed and the charming assistant wrapped our purchase.

We’d decided to get back to town early the following morning – and as we pottered around the cottage tidying and collecting our scattered affairs an unnamed excitement pulsed. The horse sat on the coffee table in front of the fire. His head peeping out where I’d carefully peeled back the wadding of fine tissue.

Our bags nestling in the hall, we snuggled on the sofa for a last glass of wine before bed, enveloped in a warm self congratulatory silence. The horse sat, like a proud parent bestowing his blessing. That’s when the dust started falling, flakes of blackened resin skittered over the brick hearth, an unearthly screeching and then thump. A formless heavy blackness crumpled onto the cold grate – we both jumped – Keith got there first, and as he gingerly reached out, two hard shining eyes flicked open. Then it cawed. Raucously, hysterically, pecking wildly at Keith’s outstretched hand, flapping clouds of charcoal particles as it arrowed toward my head, circled the room and landed on the back of the gently rocking horse. A vein of blood feathered across Keith’s wrist. One single droplet fell and with a gentle splat engorged the cool whiteness of tissue as he lunged for the bird.

We pulled up gently outside the house, I didn’t notice the postman whistling on his way, and I didn’t think, as Keith bent to scoop up the mail that littered the hall carpet. I was bringing home the horse. I carried him straight up to Charlotte’s room, ripped off the paper and placed him with great ceremony in the waiting bay. I knelt on the floor, lost in the contemplation of perfection.

I don’t know how long he had been standing there. It was the crow, perched on the sill mawking at the window that snapped me back to reality. Keith was rigid in the doorway, clutching a fistful of paper. “What have you done?” Was he pleading? He opened his hand and the ragged wad of final demands and loan applications fluttered across the parquet. Mechanically I reached for the nearest. “With the refusal of your ulterior application for renegotiation of payment, The Halifax Building Society have been left with no alternative but to foreclose…” I looked up at Keith, but the sadness of the world blurred my vision, back to the page, “…pending auction…” Back to Keith. The tears of generations streamed down his face as his heavily shod foot swung past my head impacting into the wooden ribs of my one last detail, it’s solid reassurance cracking and splintering as it collided brutally with finely plastered pink brick wall.

I sat lost in one glistening eye as the thunder of slamming front door rolled into my consciousness. I waited. I waited all night, but he didn’t come home. So I came to work.

So here I am. I offer a way out. What’s that? The blind leading the hopeless?