Garden of Earthly Bodies Read online

  She leaned back on her elbows and refused to look at him.

  ‘Go to the doctors if you think it means something. You have to go some time anyway, for your meds,’ he said. He had looped a tie around his neck and held it still. ‘Why don’t you bring it up with Doctor what’s-her-face? I’m sure it’s nothing. Just your hormones.’

  ‘You’re not funny.’

  ‘Sorry. Oh, come on. I’m only messing.’

  He waited until his tie was straight before bending low to look at her very closely. She stared back at him with her mouth tightly closed. Then something about his stooped posture, implying contrition, made her pop her lips out so they were full again. He leaned in and butted his mouth there, poking his tongue so she was obliged to part her teeth for it.

  ‘When is your next appointment?’ he asked, when he drew away from her.

  ‘Today actually.’

  ‘Well, there you go. You’ll have your answer then. Just leave it until she’s had a look.’

  The first half hour of the silence Richard left in his wake was a relief, until it was not. There was an invisible line somewhere in her solitude beyond which Marianne began to crave respite from herself again. She had adapted well enough to this new climate of self-sufficiency to spot the signs when the solace of being alone turned swiftly into a dangerous solipsism. She had her work, writing features freelance for a magazine, but the amount she was asked to do was slowly decreasing and did little to distract her in the first place. She could sometimes feel her eyes drifting from the screen of her Mac into empty space.

  There was a certain place far back in her consciousness where she was liable to fall. And there were so many seconds in the day, too many, to guard herself from. Time has a way of bullying the mind into submission, of breaking down all defences until the thing one cannot bear to think must be born again and again, endlessly reconceived. And she could never bring herself to abort it once it emerged; she felt guilty if she tried, for it only survived through recollection. The thing itself – could she call it a memory? – still had the force of a revelation; the event, the incident (how formal that word was), that entered her head was tied to a person. There was no longer even a face – Marianne’s thoughts orbited a blank spot where the face should have been. She was remembering an impression of someone who no longer impinged on her life with the same sharpness of outline or sound of voice. But her essence, or rather her tone, was still there. Tone survives. What had happened couldn’t claim all of her, not all at once. Marianne worked very hard to shift that impression of violence, which she had once considered quite alien and surreal, but the days were long and the seconds longer, so she was beginning to believe in what had happened as though it should have happened all along. Again, she saw the dark track of the underground, the charred walls, the mice that scurried along the rails. Her blood ran cold. The key was to avoid lapsing into reverie. It was a form of abstinence she had taken great pains to practise in the last six months, and which she had still not mastered.

  She didn’t want to have a shower that morning because then she would have to confront the hair on her back and actually do something about it. God, it’s a hair. Get the razor out and shave it off, for Christ’s sake. There was something faintly reasonable about the idea of showing it to a doctor, to see why it had grown there. She had a wary, ambivalent respect for doctors on the whole. She felt torn between wanting to be studied – for that dispassionate, clinical gaze sometimes excited her very much – and wanting to remain inscrutable, opaque. She had adopted a perverse habit of ignoring anything her GP told her to do. It was all that she had, her autonomy, and she exercised it by revolting against what was expected of her every once in a while, a healthy exercise that revived something of the colour in her cheeks. She felt better when she refused to be well, perhaps because she refused to believe ‘wellness’ could be boiled down to anything. Wellness – in mind and body – was entirely complex, a mythic state, and she was adamant nobody had the right expertise to bring it to her.

  Coming away from the doctor, her ears resounding with instructions on which vitamin supplements to take and the creams she had to apply to a rash that had developed on her hand (the origin of which the doctor wasn’t quite qualified enough to determine), she found greater consolation in resisting all of it. It was a passive, peculiar form of power and the reward was more potent. She marvelled at signs of physical impairment, at her command of her own body in simply letting it down. The rash grew flaky and sore and she happily scratched it until it bled. Streaks of blood clung to the cracked knuckles but she didn’t want to wash it off straight away. It was evidence. It gave her a licence to pity herself. And she did. She had endless stores of self-pity and she knew she would perhaps one day extricate herself from this dreary, rather childish pattern of behaviour, but for now she wanted to indulge it. She found solace in impairment. It was signs of vigorous health, imperviousness to decay, that frightened her. She held her thoughts in her hands and wanted people to see them.

  But once the original shock of something is absorbed into consciousness, it fails to reverberate. As she saw the inflamed skin on a daily basis, she lost the surprise and the novelty of it. Richard was also rather skilled at intervening when she went too far, although the intervention was slightly delayed, as though he had been waiting to see if she snapped out of it without interference. He held her hands in his own and balanced them in the air between them, as though they were no longer alive. This is mad, he’d say. The longer you attack yourself, the longer it will take to heal. You know that. You know the cream will help. I’d feel sorry for you if it was something you couldn’t help.

  Her appointment at the doctors’ was at 3.00 P.M. She had spent all morning emailing someone she was interviewing for her next article. The piece was commissioned for an issue on ‘women without men’. The woman Marianne was interviewing had recently written a book, based on her own experience, about the problem of finding love before she was no longer fertile enough to conceive a child. She did not wish to have a sperm donor. She wanted the man before the sperm, a life-affirming union between herself and another, and couldn’t bear to open her legs for anything else. It was a horribly intimate admission of defeat, but Marianne could only respond with the usual stock phrases that professionalism required.

  Her phone vibrated on the table. A message from Richard. She ignored it up until it was time to leave for her appointment. Then she swiped the lock screen aside.

  Please can you pick up some antihistamines? Run out and nose is streaming. Not a good day for it. x

  She was about to put her phone in her bag when it buzzed inside her hand.

  Are you going to show the doctor your hairy back? x

  She texted back:

  Fuck off. Thought you had an important meeting today.

  A second later his reply was curt.

  Already had it. I didn’t get the promotion.

  She didn’t know what to say but it was nearly time for her to go and she couldn’t leave him hanging on her silence.

  I’m sorry. Speak soon. x

  She panicked when she realised she was running late for her appointment. She had planned to wash her hair very quickly but now there was no time. She couldn’t remember if she had washed it yesterday or the day before. She ran her fingers through the roots. She had fine blonde hair, but lots of it, and it never seemed to fall from her scalp like other people’s. The hair that collected in the drains of their sink and shower was only Richard’s dark, woolly locks and never hers, though there was so much of it. She derived a strange pleasure from the knowledge that it continued to hold fast to her head in spite of what occurred in her life.

  She dressed quickly, and when she pulled her T-shirt down, she smoothed the back of her hand across her spine. For a fleeting second, she couldn’t find the hair and she was appeased. Perhaps it was smaller than she’d remembered and her brain was simply sensitive, open to panic that early in the morning. Then it brushed her just as she broug
ht her hand back down. It was a thick root, swelling darkly through the skin. And she was certain it had grown in the space of the night.

  The waiting room in the Dulwich surgery was emptier than usual. Once she’d signed in, Marianne sat in the corner where there was a wooden box of toys, a desk with drawings to colour in, an abacus and a few cursory pieces of Lego scattered on the floor.

  There was a girl, perhaps no older than four, sitting in the hollowed-out dent of a beanbag beside the box of toys. She was lifting the limp figures out one by one, her face impassive. There was a Barbie doll without any clothes to cover her shiny body, and the girl ignored the rest to fixate on this, perhaps repulsed by the slightly mottled and bobbly texture of some of the softer toys. Marianne dreaded to think of the germs those toys had accumulated over time – they must have been heaped in that box for at least twenty years. The girl took the Barbie by the feet and pulled her squeaky thighs apart in a sudden motion that surprised Marianne after the solemn conduct with which the child had taken the toys from their hiding place. She squeezed her head so that the sides of her face deflated under her thumbs and met in the middle. Then she released it and waited to see how long it would take for Barbie’s head to pop back.

  ‘Marianne Turner,’ a familiar voice said.

  Marianne lifted her head to the woman standing in the doorway that led on to the consultation rooms. They met one another’s eyes, and Marianne got up and walked across the waiting room towards her.

  This was a small interval in which she never knew where to look. If she stared all the while at her doctor while she crossed the room, without breaking eye contact, she’d come across too eager, insinuating an honesty that wasn’t there. But looking anywhere else would imply a brattish streak, an instinctual aversion to scrutiny. She was, in fact, half-disciple, half-brat; willing to be studied yet loath to cooperate. She crossed the room, focusing on the space just above her doctor’s left shoulder.

  ‘Hi, Marianne, come this way.’

  She followed Doctor Hind to her office overlooking the car park. On the desk were three photographs of Hind’s children. They all shared her features – a long nose with wide nostrils, heavy-lidded eyes with thick horse-like eyelashes and a large forehead. They bore a resemblance to her but something was always a little off, which was where the individual crept through.

  Doctor Hind was, herself, a large-boned and muscular woman in her mid-forties with a thinning hairline. When she sat down, she always sat very far back into her chair so that Marianne had the impression she was ready to immerse herself in someone else. Her large forehead appeared to move, to pulse slightly, every few seconds, as though it contained her heart.

  ‘So, we upped your dosage of paroxetine by ten milligrams last time you were here.’ Doctor Hind glanced at the computer screen from a languid distance in her chair. ‘How are you doing now?’

  Marianne hesitated. The doctor’s room was not a place where she could recall the violence of her thoughts with the clarity they deserved. The grey, muted atmosphere of this office, with its sanitiser and paper towels, made her feel like she had imagined it all.

  ‘Well, I found it difficult adjusting in the first few weeks. I’m still not sure whether it’s having much of an effect.’

  Doctor Hind said nothing.

  ‘I can only say I feel less awful than before – when I’d just started taking the higher dose. But I wouldn’t say I feel better than when I was on the lower dose.’

  ‘I would give it another week or so. It does take some time to adjust to the new dosage.’

  To Marianne’s mind, a lot could happen in a week. A mere minute was long enough for someone to decide to die and then to change their mind at the last. A morbid thought can arrive like a spasm, quick and crucial, and everything that precedes it is disqualified for what seems like an eternity. And vice versa – the trap of consciousness comes undone at the last second and one is released from the most terrible convictions.

  Only death makes the last thought irreversible. It does not mean the last thought is a reliable one. And there is always a better thought, waiting to intervene, if we give it time, Marianne thought. Her throat constricted as she thought of this, as she always did. She always came back to it. Perhaps Marie had changed her mind before she died. In a split second, she entered that place without really consenting to it.

  Marianne waited for Doctor Hind to resume. She was fast becoming resentful of the patience with which she was being treated.

  ‘Have you been feeling calmer at least?’ Doctor Hind said.

  ‘Yes. But I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Every night?’

  ‘Most.’

  ‘Do you wake up in the middle of the night or just have trouble getting off to sleep?’

  ‘Yes. Both of those things.’

  ‘What time do you go to bed?’

  It was like she was a six-year-old again.

  ‘About ten? Eleven?’

  ‘What do you do immediately beforehand?’

  Marianne hesitated.

  She would have liked to say that she rolled her boyfriend’s penis around her mouth – sometimes, in a lazy off hand moment, closing her teeth around it to hurry matters forward – until she rolled over and he spurted a glossy, silver line across her back – always her back, she preferred it that way for reasons she never disclosed to herself – and then she lay and waited while he went to the bathroom for the toilet roll, which they somehow always forgot to have on hand.

  She always felt grievously disappointed as he cooled on her back, though he’d been hot when he landed there. The tight, involving intimacy of a few minutes earlier always concluded with a fatal lassitude. The moment that had held her so quickly in its grasp now scattered her across the night, and she could not see the end of it. She outlived every concentrated unit of time – where all the great things happened, every orgasm – and her pleasure fell into misuse, grew extinct again. There were too many seconds in the day to keep those momentums aloft.

  ‘I watch TV sometimes. Netflix. The news.’

  ‘Try to avoid watching any screens at least an hour before sleep. Phone and tablet included. The glare of the screen slows the process as it tricks the body into thinking it’s daytime.’ Doctor Hind looked at the screen again. ‘How has your appetite been?’

  ‘Same.’

  ‘And are you starting to feel less anxious?’

  When she asked this, Doctor Hind looked at Marianne directly, and her head was tilted in an almost reproving manner, as though she considered it a question of will.

  ‘I don’t think so. But, like you said, I’ve not adjusted to the higher dose yet.’

  ‘Yes. But it’s important to know whether you’ve been feeling any violent urges or whether you’ve felt… irrational.’ Doctor Hind lowered her voice. ‘Have you considered harming yourself lately?’

  ‘No.’

  Doctor Hind glanced at Marianne’s hands, which were curled in her lap.

  ‘They’re better. The cream works,’ Marianne pre-empted.

  ‘And you haven’t—’

  ‘No.’

  Doctor Hind raised her eyebrows. They had gone grey, though her thinning hair was still a coarse black.

  ‘Do you know what I was about to ask?’

  ‘Yes. I haven’t killed myself.’

  Doctor Hind’s mouth twitched into a half-smile.

  ‘But have you thought about it?’

  ‘Not really. Only as much as the next person.’

  This was apparently reason enough to continue.

  ‘I’m just going to check your blood pressure.’

  Marianne surrendered her arm and winced when Doctor Hind grazed it with the patch of Velcro. When the arm cuff tightened, she imagined that her arm was growing inside of it.

  ‘Actually, there is something else unrelated I wanted to ask you about,’ Marianne said, while the numbers vacillated on the machine. A tiny heart symbol flashed on the screen. ‘I was wondering if you could take a
look at something on my back.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘It’s a hair. A really thick, black one. I’ve never had any hairs on my back before.’ Marianne’s arm was released and she immediately scratched the part where the cuff had been. ‘I wondered also if you would remove it for me.’

  ‘No problem. Let’s have a look.’

  Marianne took off her denim jacket and bunched it on the floor by her bag, then rolled her T-shirt up over her breasts, facing away from Doctor Hind. She brushed the hair with her hand, having forgotten where it was momentarily. It felt even longer, though Marianne didn’t trust her powers of estimation.

  The doctor didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then Marianne felt her cold palm pressing against the centre of her spine.

  ‘That’s…’

  Doctor Hind didn’t know how to finish her sentence.

  ‘It’s just the one hair, but it’s in an odd place so I thought I’d bring it up.’ Marianne spoke to one of the plants beneath the window.

  ‘There’s another hair. Here.’ The doctor placed her finger a few inches higher. She paused and Marianne felt her breath on her back. ‘Also, one here.’ The finger grazed the back of Marianne’s neck, on the rounded tip of the spine. ‘They’re all exactly the same size, colour and texture, though you don’t have thick black hair.’

  ‘Should I be worried?’

  ‘I’d like you to take a blood test if that’s alright.’

  Marianne let her shirt fall back and sat round to face Doctor Hind.

  ‘What’s the cause, do you think?’ Marianne said.

  ‘I can’t say until we see the results of your blood test.’ She turned her face back to the screen of her computer and clicked her mouse a few times. ‘Are you free to have one now?’

  ‘Don’t I normally have to wait a few days?’

  Marianne panicked. She preferred an interval in which she could compose herself for something like this.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure someone will be free to do it. Just wait here.’

  Doctor Hind got up abruptly, closing the door with a bang as she left.