Bodily Harm (38 page)

Rennie tells Lora about the man with the rope. She’s certain that Lora will be able to produce something much heavier, a multiple axe murder at the least.

“Sick,” Lora says. “They shouldn’t even put those guys away, they should just hang a few cement blocks around their legs and drop them in the harbour, you know? Let them out in twenty years and they just do it again. I once knew this guy who wanted to tie me
to the bedpost. No way, I said. You want to tie somebody up, I’ve got a few suggestions, but you’re not starting with me. Try a sheep and a pair of rubber boots and work your way up. He come back?”

“No,” says Rennie.

“I’d rather be plain old raped,” says Lora, “as long as there’s nothing violent.”

Rennie feels there’s been a communications breakdown. Then she realizes that Lora is talking about something that has actually happened to her. Without any warning at all.

“God,” she says, “what did you do?”

“Do?” says Lora. “He had a knife. I was just lucky he didn’t mess anything up, including me. I could of kicked myself for not having a better lock on the window.”

Rennie sees that Lora is pleased to have shocked her. She’s enjoying the reaction; it’s as if she’s displaying something, an attribute somewhere between a skill and a deformity, like double-jointedness; or a mark of courage, a war wound or a duelling scar. The pride of the survivor.

Rennie knows what she’s supposed to feel: first horror, then sympathy. But she can’t manage it. Instead she’s dejected by her own failure to entertain. Lora has better stories.

Rennie watches Lora’s mouth open and close, studies the nicotine stains on her once perfect teeth, it’s a movie with the sound gone. She’s thinking that she doesn’t really like Lora very much; she never has liked her very much; in fact she dislikes her. They have nothing in common except that they’re in here. There’s nobody here to look at but Lora, nobody to listen to but Lora. Rennie is going to like her a whole lot less by the time they get out.

“But, Jesus, will you listen to me,” says Lora. “Here we are, just sitting around on our asses talking about men, fucking men, pardon my French, like at high school only then it was boys.”

“What else do you suggest we do?” says Rennie, with sarcasm; after all, it’s Lora’s fault they’re in here. But it’s lost on Lora.

“If it was two guys in here,” she says, “you think they’d be talking about women? They’d be digging a tunnel or strangling the guards from behind, you know? Like at the movies.” She stands up, stretches. “I need to pee,” she says. “At least we don’t have to do it on the floor, though ten to one somebody already has, it smells like it.” She slips off her underpants, spreads her purple skirt over the red bucket like a tent, squats down. Rennie stares at the wall, listening to the patter of liquid against plastic. She doesn’t want to know what Lora will wipe herself with; there are only two choices, hands or clothing.

Rennie has her knees drawn up, she’s cold. If they lie down they’ll be wet, so they’re still sitting, backs against the wall. The light comes through the door, endlessly, it’s impossible to sleep. She puts her forehead on her knees and closes her eyes.

“I bet you could see out the window,” says Lora, “if I gave you a leg up.”

Rennie opens her eyes. She fails to see the point, but it’s something to do. Lora bends and cups her hands, Rennie puts her right foot into them and Lora hoists, and Rennie manages to reach up and grab the bars. She pulls herself up, she can raise her head to the opening.

It’s a courtyard of sorts, with a wall around it and another building on the other side. Her eyes are almost at ground level; it’s overgrown with weeds, a white jungle in the moonlight. The gallows platform rises out of the weeds, a derelict tower. Rennie knows where they are. On three sides of the courtyard it’s a sheer drop to
the sea, and the building they’re in is the fourth side. There’s a faint smell of pigs. No one is out there.

“There’s nothing to see,” she says when she’s back down.

Lora rubs her hands together. “You’re heavier than I thought,” she says.

They sit down again. After five minutes or half an hour there’s a sound above them, outside the window. A scuttling, a squeak.

“Rats,” says Lora. “Around here they call them coconut rodents. Mostly they just eat coconuts.”

Rennie decides to concentrate on something else. She closes her eyes: she knows that there are some things she must avoid thinking about. Her own lack of power, for instance; what could be done to her.

She can feel Lora’s arm against her own, it’s comforting. She thinks about refrigerators, cool and white, stocked with the usual things: bottles, cartons of milk, packets, coffee beans in fragrant paper bags, eggs lined up quietly in their shells. Vacuum cleaners, chromium plated taps, bathtubs, a whole store full of bathtubs, soap in pastel wrappers, the names of English herbs, the small routines.

Lora’s still talking. But Rennie can’t concentrate, she’s getting hungrier and hungrier. She wonders when it will be morning. Surely they will bring something to eat, they’ll have to, her stomach is cramping and she hopes it’s only the hunger.

Her eyes feel gritty, she’s irritated because she hasn’t slept more, it’s Lora’s fault, she needs more sleep and she’s thirsty too. It’s like the time she was trapped all night in a bus station, by a blizzard, on her way home for Christmas, some town halfway there, the snack bar isn’t open and the toilets don’t work, there’s a bad smell and no prospect of a bus out until dawn, maybe not even then, they have to
wait for the wind to go down before they can plough the roads, people yawning and dozing, a few grumpy children, the coffee machine out of order. But it would be tolerable if only the woman packed beside her on the bench would quit talking, in a maroon coat and curlers, no such luck, it goes on and on, triplets, polio, car crashes, operations for dropsy, for burst appendixes, sudden death, men leaving their wives, aunts, cousins, sisters, crippling accidents, a web of blood relationships no one could possibly untangle, a litany at the same time mournful and filled with curious energy, glee almost, as if the woman is childishly delighted with herself for being able to endure and remember so much pointless disaster.
True Confessions
. Rennie tunes out, studies the outfit on the woman asleep on the bench across from them, her head sideways: the corsage with the Christmas bells and silver balls and the tiny plastic Santa Claus held captive on her large woollen breast.

“You aren’t listening,” says Lora accusingly.

“Sorry,” says Rennie. “I’m really tired.”

“Maybe I should shut up for a while,” says Lora. She sounds hurt.

“No, go on,” says Rennie. “It’s really interesting.” Maybe soon they will come to question her, isn’t that what happens? And then she can explain everything, she can tell them why it’s a mistake, why she should not be here. All she has to do is hang on; sooner or later, something is bound to happen.

Rennie is walking along a street, a street with red-brick houses, the street she lives on. The houses are big, square, solid, some with porches, some with turrets and gingerbread trim painted white. These people take care of their houses, they are proud of their houses. Houseproud, says Rennie’s grandmother, who is.

Her mother and her grandmother are with her. It’s Sunday, they’ve been to church. It’s fall, the leaves have turned, yellow, orange, red, a few drift down on them as they walk along. The air is cool, cold almost, she’s so glad to be back, she feels safe. But nobody’s paying any attention to her. Her hands are cold, she lifts them up to look at them, but they elude her. Something’s missing.

Here we go, says her mother. Here are the steps. Easy, now.

I don’t want to die, says her grandmother. I want to live forever.

The sky has darkened, there’s a wind, the leaves are falling down, red on her grandmother’s white hat, they’re wet.

The window above them gets brighter and brighter, now it’s a square of heat. Rennie thinks she can see mist rising from the floor and walls and from the red bucket. The lights in the corridor are still on. Lora’s asleep, her head thrown back into the corner where she’s propped, her mouth is open a little, she’s snoring. Rennie has found out she talks in her sleep, nothing intelligible.

Finally there’s a shuffle in the corridor, the clink of metal. A policeman is here, unlocking the door; in two-tone blue and a shoulder holster. Rennie shakes Lora’s arm to wake her up. She wonders if they’re supposed to stand at attention, as they used to in public school when the teacher came in.

There’s another man with the policeman, dressed in shoddy grey. He’s carrying a bucket, red, identical to the one that’s fermenting by the door, and two tin plates stacked one on the other and two tin cups. He comes in and sets the bucket and the plates and cups down on the floor beside the first bucket. The policeman stays outside in the corridor.

“Hi there, Stanley,” Lora says, rubbing her eyes.

The man grins at her, shyly, he’s frightened, he backs out. The policeman with him locks the door again, acting as if he hasn’t heard.

On each of the plates there’s a slice of bread, thinly buttered. Rennie looks into the bucket. The bottom is covered with a brownish liquid that she hopes is tea.

She scoops some out in a tin cup, takes that and a plate over to Lora.

“Thanks,” says Lora. “What’s this?” She’s scratching her legs, which have red dots on them, bites of some kind.

“Morning tea,” says Rennie. It’s the English tradition, still.

Lora tastes it. “You could’ve fooled me,” she says. “You sure you got the right bucket?” She spits the tea out onto the floor.

The tea is salty. They’ve made a mistake, Rennie thinks they’ve put salt in it instead of sugar. She pours the tea back into the bucket and chews the bread slowly.