H Gaston

Gaston

Ever since that unfortunate accident after which Gaston had had his leg
amputated things had been different between us. It was as if he had not
only lost a leg but something more besides.

"I still love you," I shouted one night when I hadn't been able to
stand it anymore.

"I can't even walk straight," said Gaston simply and then he had
limped badly from the room.

This had been Gaston's constant refrain for the previous two months. I
felt insulted and couldn't understand why Gaston couldn't see that I
loved him just as much with one leg as with two.

"It doesn't make any difference to me," I said.

"That's exactly my point," said Gaston. "It doesn't make any
difference to you at all. It's me that's suffering."

Gaston always had a way of winning any argument. So when that Thursday
the letter finally came I didn't know whether to count my chickens or
hatch them.

I prepared breakfast and then, jittering, I carried the plate of toast
in one hand and the letter in the other up to our room. I was careful
not to bound. Me bounding seemed to infuriate Gaston these days. He
said I was showing off. That I wanted to rub his face in his newly
unipedal state.

I nudged Gaston awake and unable to contain my excitement I unfolded
the letter and read it to him.

"So what do you think?" I said.

"It sounds awful," said Gaston.

"What do you mean awful? It's the kind of opportunity we've been
waiting for for years."

"That was before the accident," said Gaston. "It's different now I've
got one leg."

I held up the letter. "They obviously don't care. They must have heard
what happened. It was in all the papers."

"All the papers?" said Gaston disgustedly. "I bet it's even gone into
that bloody scrapbook of yours."

I was hurt. The scrapbook was ours, not mine. I said: "What have you
got to lose?"

Gaston didn't answer but instead he snatched the letter out of my hand
and read it for himself. After several long minutes he nodded his head
and said ok, we would go. I prayed that this would be just the corner
we needed to turn around.

Gaston and I had been together for eight years. The first night we met
Gaston had been doing a guest-spot on the Paul Daniels magic show and I
had been in the audience. Gaston had asked for volunteers and the rest
was history.

Like many lovers we had repeated the story of our chance meeting at
countless dinner parties. What I had never repeated not even to Gaston
was what my life had been like before that night. For many years I had
been sexually abused by my father and four uncles. They would tie me up
and use me one by one. Quite simply Gaston had saved me and I would
love him forever for that. Even if he never knew exactly why.

On the day of the audition I put one of the kitchen chairs outside so
Gaston could sit and supervise the loading of the car.

"I'm not a cripple," said Gaston, eyeing the chair suspiciously.

"You need to preserve your strength," I said.

"It's Channel 5," said Gaston. "That's all."

"Channel 5 is big," I said. "At least it's terrestrial, not one of
those satellites."

"Satellites is where it all started," said Gaston. "The day they went
up was the day the entertainment industry dumbed down."

"Things change," I said.

"I'm all too aware of that," said Gaston and then his head snapped up.
"Make sure you take both sets of ropes. If we're going to do this then
I don't want any cock-ups."

The studio was about an hour's drive from our home. I was driving. The
doctors had been quite adamant that Gaston was not allowed to drive. It
was true that cars could be adapted and we had even inquired about it
but at the end of the interview one of the doctors had taken me aside
and then said quite elliptically that Gaston, 'was not ready
yet'.

"What do you mean?" I had asked.

The doctor had coughed nervously, perhaps surprised to be questioned
so directly. "Well," he said, "let's just say that losing your leg can
take some getting used to. It's not only a physical challenge, it's a
mental one. And what with Gaston's circumstances&;#8230;"

He had left his words hanging there as if the rest was a blank that
didn't need filling in.

"What circumstances?" I said.

The doctor coughed again and I got the feeling that he felt he had
gone too far. "I thought you&;#8230;," he started and then he
stopped. He shuffled some papers across his desk and then he stood up,
striding purposefully as if he suddenly had somewhere important to
go.

Tinkerbell was supposed to be meeting us in the car park of the tv
studio. Tinkerbell was Gaston's assistant and she predated me in his
universe. That night when Gaston and I had first met it had been
Tinkerbell who had I thrust stainless-steel swords through while she
was bound and gagged inside a wooden box. We had hit it off straight
away.

However, when we got to the car park Tinkerbell wasn't there. Instead
we spied her sister Noreen hanging around the frozen ice-cream machine
playing nervously with her long greasy hair.

"You go and speak to her," said Gaston. "I fear the worst."

As I walked across the car park under the blazing sun I felt Gaston's
eyes boring into my back. I feared the worst too.

"She's not coming," said Noreen before I had chance to say
anything.

"It's a bit short notice, isn't it?"

Noreen glanced over my shoulder and then back at some point just below
my waist. "Don't tell him," she said, "but Tinkerbell says he's changed
since what happened. It was only because it was Channel 5 that she
agreed to this in the first place, but then when Gaston called her
yesterday and&;#8230;"

"Yes?" I said.

"You know."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I don't know. What is it?"

Noreen looked puzzled for a moment as if suddenly she didn't know what
she was doing here. Eventually, she didn't say anything.

"Well," I said. I raised my hands into the air and then dropped them
back by my sides. "It is a bit short notice."

"She says she's sorry." Noreen took some ends of her hair, put them in
her mouth and then pulled them out again abruptly. "It was an accident,
wasn't it?"

"What?" I said quickly and then I knew what she was asking. I didn't
answer, I only said that we had a show to put on and I turned and
walked back across the car park under the heat of the blazing
sun.

"That's that, isn't it?" said Gaston as I leant in through the
window.

"We'll think of something," I said.

"No," said Gaston, "my one chance at Channel 5 and bloody Tinkerbell
lets me down."

"I thought you didn't want to do it anyway?"

Gaston adjusted the seatbelt across his chest. "There's not wanting to
do things and there's not wanting to do things, you know?"

"Yeah," I said. "I know."

"You do still love me, don't you?" said Gaston.

I shook my head. "Isn't that what I've been telling you for
months?"

"Good," said Gaston. "Then prove it to me."

"What do you mean?" I said and then I knew what he meant. I felt as if
the sky had fallen down onto me at great speed and flattened me against
the gravel.

One of the results of my treatment at the hands of my father and
uncles was that I was both agoraphobic and claustrophobic. I couldn't
stand the thought of either being alone in the centre of a large field
or enclosed in the centre of a small box. Gaston was a magician and
many of his tricks involved his lovely assistant climbing into some
kind of enclosed container. I had told him long ago that I would do
anything for him, but not that.

"I can't do it," I said.

"And I can't walk on one leg," said Gaston, "but I have to. I have to
do it for the rest of my life. I only want you to be in that box for
five minutes. That's all I'm asking. If you like, I'll give you some of
my morphine."

And with that Gaston won the argument.

The morphine was in a small glass phial. Ten minutes before we were
due on Gaston told me to put my head back and open my mouth and then
expertly he cracked the phial open. The liquid that dribbled down my
throat was almost tasteless but the effect was immediate.

Gaston had told me that being on morphine was like watching a
racehorse run. It was beautiful and powerful and you could see all the
muscles perfectly delineated. In this Gaston was both right and wrong.
It wasn't like watching a racehorse, it was like being inside one. I
could feel my massive heart beating, I could feel the air surging
through my lungs. All that mattered now was winning the race and there
was no pain.

As Gaston wound up his pre-trick patter I waited for the spot to shine
and then I stepped onto the stage. I knew the routine as well as Gaston
himself, perhaps better. I had watched him perform every night for
years and every night I had mouthed the words as he himself had said
them.

Gaston was an old-style magician, he made doves disappear and then
reappear again from unlikely places, he guessed which card 25 audience
members had chosen simultaneously, he sawed his beautiful assistant in
half and then put her back together again.

Tonight there was no beautiful assistant.

Tonight there was only me.

To be bound and then divided in two while enclosed inside a sturdy
wooden box.

I put my feet together as Gaston wound the rope around them, and then
my arms together, as Gaston leant in close to do them too. I felt his
nimble fingers behind me and then his lips were close to my ear.

"Five minutes and then you'll be out," he said. "I promise."

"But Gaston," I said, "about what happened? You have to talk to
me."

"I&;#8230;"

"Yes?" I said but Gaston didn't answer and then I was inside the box
and of all of a sudden it was dark.

It was me who had answered the door that night. It had been dark then
too, the rain sleeting down. On the step were two policemen and I knew
something terrible had happened but I thought it was my mother. Things
didn't happen to Gaston. He was my hero, he had saved me.

"There's been an accident," said the first police officer, the taller
one.

"Is she&;#8230;?" I said and then I left the sentence
unfinished.

"I don't think you understand," said the police officer. "There was a
wallet found at the scene. Drove straight off a bridge. There was a
card in the wallet and it had this address on it. A name too. Gaston
LeBlanc. I think he was famous once."

Inside the box the sound of the audience was muffled. The box was four
walls, three only inches away from me, one pressed against my back.
Down by where my hands were there was a button. It opened a cavity and
it allowed you to draw your legs up. Out of the way of the saw.

When my father had tied me up he said that the trick was not to
scream. He said that screaming was a cause of pain and not the symptom.
In that, as in a lot of other things, my father was probably
wrong.

In my own way, however, I had learnt to deal with my father. As soon
as the ropes touched me I would freeze. I would hold my body still and
pretend I was somewhere else, that I was somebody else. In the end the
reaction was instinctive. It was an unasked for unconscious reaction
that I was unable to determine.

Therefore, as outside the box Gaston started to saw and the saw got
closer I was unable to move. I could only think of Gaston and hope that
one day he would love me again. He had never told me why he had driven
off the bridge just as I had never told him about my father.

It was a mistake on both our parts and the end result was the same.
There was no way that Gaston could have known how it would turn out.
For either of us.

The saw reached my tendon and began to cut its way through.