Her mind is like one of those penny cascades on the pier at
The roses in the flower beds around the park are having a second bloom. Over on one of the lawns, a fake wedding picture is being taken. A fake bride in a voluminous gown; no groom, but cascades of lilies. She’s laughing too much to be a real bride. There’s no pinch of stress around her face.
“Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.” Altered at the altar in snowy white and darkest grey. The flash of scarlet beneath his suit, the blue of the irises in her bouquet; her mind retains these images, primary in their colouring. No cascade of coins will ever force them out. The flash of scarlet, open against his white shirt as he danced at the reception with bridesmaid after bridesmaid and guest after guest, until he had danced his way into the toilet for another dance that showed his true colours. Hands gripping the edge of the sink basin, arms braced, receptive. The shutters going down in her mind when her dad told her what he had seen. Her mind closing off as her dad threw her brand new husband, that unknown quantity, out of his own wedding reception.
The first who wouldn’t penetrate her, that night or any other.
“Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds,” her friend had read during the service. It wasn’t love, then. Unable to survive the alteration it found, it couldn’t possibly be love.
“I want you to know that I won’t be penetrating you tonight,” another had said, later. Much later.
A quick progression from idle intent to dangerous edge. Half naked in a living room waiting for daylight, knots of carpet pile burning into her back, scrubbing the skin. Half hearted in the throes of something masquerading as passion. Something more like boredom and a need for distraction.
She didn’t know what the difference was. Just because he didn’t get his dick wet, it didn’t make him noble. It was still an infidelity. All those other things he’d felt free to do, with Catholic logic. “I did NOT have sex with That Woman…” It was still a betrayal of trust.
And so he hadn’t penetrated her, that night or any other.
No penetration, no adultery.
The penetration of her mind didn’t count.
She finishes her packet of crisps, wipes her hands clean on a tissue, wipes her mind clean of its thoughts.
She sits in the sunshine, her eyes closed behind her sunglasses. The plastic carrier bag that held her lunch, bought from the supermarket around the corner, is empty now. She keeps one hand on it, to stop it blowing away.
Men in City shirts lounge on the grass, reading newspapers. She hears House Classics playing on a car stereo somewhere behind her, on the road beneath the park. Lazy lunchtime with no pressure.
The music from the car chases away the Dusty Springfield song she’d been singing in her head. All I See Is You. The song he played every time. She hadn’t known a Dusty Springfield song could hold such menace. There were times when being in his vast and gloomy house felt like being in an episode of Prime Suspect. The low lighting. The menace of Dusty singing in the background, “I won't live again ‘til I'm with you; oh, darling, I won't love again unless it's with you…”. The waiting for DI Jane Tennyson to come swanning in, being simultaneously butch but fem, to announce that she, Ailsa Graham, was the latest victim of the Butcher of Heaton Moor.
Flights of fancy take her over more regularly these days, since the days began to stretch out before her so endlessly. Hours no longer seem to connect or add up to something as delineated as days. They just yawn on into the void that she meanders through, punctuated by light and then no light.
It’s the fantasies that make her life more bearable. In her fantasy realm, she is in control. Penetration is at her behest. She cues up diversions from whatever mundanity surrounds her like a dj in a booth.
The sun hides behind a cloud, and she shudders. Pavlovian reaction. Standing, she picks up the empty carrier bag and takes it over to one of the park bins. The world smells of the threat of a storm. She can almost taste it in the air. The clouds over the sun are growing darker and the closeness in the air is oppressive.
Thunderclap. The heavens open, and she is soaked to the skin in warm summer rain as the sky is littered with flashes of electrical energy. Roll after roll of thunder. People around her are scurrying for cover, trying to get out of the rain, sheltering in the shadow of the buildings that surround the park. She stays central, arms thrown wide, mouth open to catch drops of the rain. It’s years since she has stood in the rain for the sheer hell of it. The downpour invigorates her. Mascara runs into her eyes and down her cheeks. Her hair is plastered to her head, her clothes plastered to her body. Anybody looking will be able to see her underwear, the outline of her breasts, her nipples standing proud, the rise of her belly and the swell of her thighs. She doesn’t care. She feels alive for the first time in months. People are still running, with t-shirts pulled up over their heads, or newspapers serving as inadequate paper umbrellas. Some of them glance at her as they rush past, but she is oblivious. She lets the water penetrate her clothes, her skin, her mind. It washes away the grime and the cares of her life. It washes away her lethargy.
The downpour lasts ten, maybe fifteen minutes. It stops as suddenly as it began. No petering out. No half hearted attempt to squeeze a few more drops out of the clouds. It stops, the thunderstorm stops, and the clouds drift off, their load lightened.
Her clothes are dripping water, and she leaves the park, walking up into town. People walking past her, and the people she walks by, look at her as though she’s mad. Nobody is as wet as she is. Nobody.
She makes it to Kendal’s and flashes “Don’t you dare stop me” eyes at the security guard on the door. She walks through the cosmetics department leaving drips of water in her wake and takes her wetness up two floors.
She is so alive in this moment that she doesn’t care about the price of things or whether she can afford to buy, she simply takes things from the rails.
She doesn’t even try things on, just takes them to the till and buys. The saleswoman barely flickers as she rings the items through. You never question someone who is paying good money.
It feels liberating to do this. She receives her purchases in their bags and takes them to the fitting rooms. The saleswoman on duty looks at her and smiles.
“Getting changed, are you?” she says, almost laughing.
Ailsa grins back at her, alive and full of laughter.
“I’ve got a receipt,” she tells the woman.
“Go on in, love.”
Brand new underwear, new shoes, a skirt and top. She transforms before her own eyes, in the mirror, like Mr Ben. Colourful and vibrant, she emerges from the fitting room, her old, wet clothes stuffed into the same bags that mere moments ago held the new feathers she’s wearing now.
She’s high and laughing, washed clean by the storm, washed clean of him and all the things in her past that she has been carrying for too long. She leaves the store, smiling, her eyes wide open. Ready and willing to greet the world.
Something in that rainstorm penetrated her soul. Something cleaned her outside and in. Something that is going to lift her and carry her away, clean out of sight.
She feels it.
© J R Hargreaves August 2006
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