Life (54 page)

Lily Rose was dead. Spence was no longer Spence. Jake was an arrogant little stranger. The whole world had changed, slyly, secretly: giving no sign, no warning. It had held itself together on the surface so that no one would know, while out of sight, shuffle shuffle tick tack click clack, it was moving the pieces around, changing into something different and malign. No one knew except Anna. She had found out: that was why the world was trying to kill her, why something was driving her mad. But the punishment was sheer revenge, because there was nothing Anna could do, no matter if she could get anyone to believe her. It was too late.

She was in the Biols coffee bar—a place she had thought she would never enter again after that hateful interview with Ilse. Everything had changed (the prices, the foodstuffs, the furniture, the makeshift posters on the walls), but everything was the same. She was having coffee with Jennie Nasrat, one of her two overseas doctoral students, the other being Ursula Masood. Ursula was always bunking off, unable to take the horrific hours you have to put in, serving the gods of molecular biology, no matter how fantastic the tech gets; Jennie was a trouper. They were gossiping. No, the words didn’t come back, only the sweet slenderness of Jennie’s wrist, encircled by the leather strap of her old-fashioned watch, the delicacy of her shoulders, her clear voice, her gentle bearing.

The loveliness of a young woman—

Oh no, oh no, not gone forever, please, don’t tell me that, please no—

She went down to her new room and sat at her work table, afraid to look behind her in case those flowers were still there. The date on the phone pad was the twentieth of May, she had no idea if that was today’s date. Her mind was wiped clean.

So, Dr Senoz, you finally understand what everyone was getting upset about?

Yes, I do understand. Meret Hazelwood has explained it to me. There will be no more beautiful young women, no more swaggering young men to court them. It’s awful.

The psychological effects of this development, if it proves to be fact, must be immense. If our genes no longer talk the talk, how long will we go on walking the walk? Already the social boundaries of gender have become thoroughly uncertain, and we see the repercussions everywhere. So much of our philosophy, of our humanity itself, rests on this most vital opposition. I seriously wonder if we can be human without it—

She stared down at this text, on a newspaper page, head propped on her hands, rubbing her fingers along her hairline. Spence collected her clippings for her and left them on her desk. How cruel he could be, this new Spence. Meret’s welcome to him… Anna Anaconda had plain resented all the philosophical fuss about TY. She could understand the grief about clinical problems, fertility problems. She just didn’t get this kind of claptrap.
I seriously wonder if we can be human without it—
Get a life, pundits. It was only a deformed chromosome, make up another way to tell being from nothingness, for heaven’s sake. Now Anna could feel the fear and such a sense of loss and betrayal. She had wasted her life. She needn’t have bothered trying to fight fair; the game was over. This jagged flaw running through the human world, crisped all along its boundary with such complex variation, was closing up of its own accord. It would become a shallow ditch; it would fade and be gone… No need to dress down, modestly avoiding male attention. No need to make any of her sacrifices, evolution just evolves. But this was a circular argument, because of course it must have been the TY effect that had made Anna like that, given her the puzzle of being a woman and a scientist, decreed every detail of her behavior.
I didn’t do it.
I didn’t create the Transferred Y effect, I am the effect. It was as if she had said, I am God. The enormity of her situation, the abyss into which she had plunged the human future came rushing over her—

She went round to The Rectory to look for her team. They weren’t at home and she badly needed them. Isobel Hazelwood greeted her at the door.

“Ah, Anna. I expect you were hoping to find your husband here.”

“Is he here?”

“He is not. He and Meret have left me holding the babies, once again. I suppose they think they can trust me to be discreet, well they cannot.”

“Can I take Jake home now?”

“I think the children are in the basement.” She called them, “Tomkin! Florrie! Tell Jake, his mother is here!” and floated ahead of Anna: gliding first to the newell post of the rather grand staircase, propelling herself from thence to another handhold, a doorway further along the hall, and so by stages to the breakfast room. A bowl of dying flowers stood on a table among what looked like the debris of several days of casual meals. The pictures on the walls were of nude women and children. “My daughter tries to keep the place tidy,” said Isobel. “Or so she tells me. I think the effort is chiefly mental. It never seems to reach the outer reality. We should hire someone. Would you like a sherry?” Isobel sat down and Anna sat down. It was strange that this lean, handsome woman, in her fantastical antique Japanese kimono in the middle of the day, was Meret’s mother. She looked so old, her features blurred, all the life gone from her tired rusty hair.

“Your son is a lovely child. I’m surprised that you let him come here so much.”

“What?”

“I can’t be everywhere at once. And children, pretty children are so flirtatious.”

“What?” repeated Anna, unease creeping up her spine.

“You must know about my husband, surely? Someone must have told you. He’s an artist and a free spirit, and it’s no real harm. People make such a fuss these days about things that were accepted, quietly: things that have always gone on. I must admit I sent Blondel to school soon as he was seven: and I keep a close eye on Tomkin and little Charlie. But I think he knows not to foul the nest. We have no money. We’re dependent on Charles’s good graces.”

“What about Meret?” whispered Anna.

“It’s a pity Jake is so
friendly.
You shouldn’t let him out of your sight, if that’s the way you bring him up. Still, let’s hope the old tom cat has lost his urge for conquest.”

Tomkin and Florrie appeared at the door of the room. “Ah,” said Isobel, “Where’s Jake?”

The boy rolled his eyes and grinned. Florrie, her white tee-shirt slipping from a tiny, softly rounded white shoulder, pointed upwards. “He’s upstairs with my granddad.” The little girl’s rosebud smile was full of lascivious knowledge—

“Anna?
Anna!
”

Spence was bending over her. She was lying on the floor.

“Come back to bed.”

“I haven’t been to bed. I went to the Rectory to look for you.”

“Shit. Anna, I haven’t been near her since… It’s over, honey. I’m here for you now. I’m your Spence.” He knelt beside her and stroked her hair. “Anna, don’t yell at me, do you think you should see a doctor?”

She didn’t want to see a doctor. The appalling vast crime she had committed was stuck in her throat, like a piece of poisoned apple, what could a doctor do? She would have to live with these dreams: like this dream where she walked into Meret’s studio and found Spence and Meret with Jake, all three naked, the child being sodomized by his father while Meret held his head, his baby tongue lapping at the furry lip of this cup of flesh between white thighs. These images are part of the repertoire, human folklore is full of them: fuck the child, eat the child. They come to the surface when a society is disintegrating (Hansel and Gretel, oh Philomel with melody), and things like this will really happen; and equally they come to the surface when an individual mind is breaking up under pressure. The nightmares were so real she woke believing in them completely, convinced it had all happened, and then she’d been spirited back to her bed. It was all she could do not to TAKE THE CHILD AND RUN! But that was the last thing; that would be terrible… She must hang on, through these difficult few days, until she got used to her new life. But it was an unkind extra turn of the screw that this house, her own house, had to be haunted.

At first she saw nothing. She heard no more of those light, wandering footsteps that had puzzled her when they got back from Manchester. She was only aware, very much, of the ghost’s presence: aware that someone unseen had left a room the moment before she walked into it, aware that someone had passed her on the stairs, had looked in through the bathroom door while she was brushing her teeth or running Jake’s bath water. She said nothing to Spence or Jake. If Spence thought the house was haunted he’d have said something about it long ago, and she didn’t want to give Jake scary ideas.

She tried to behave normally and believed she was succeeding, though she felt like a paper balloon in the shape of a woman, like a dry puffball that would fall into dust at a touch. The ghost did not seem hostile. It was a woman. Maybe she’d lived here when the house was young. Anna began to see, in her mind’s eye, a woman in Edwardian dress, a sensible dark skirt, short enough so it would not become draggled when you were in the street on foot, stout boots, a neatly belted waist, a tailored jacket. The face was indistinct in feature, but it gave an impression of briskness, endeavor, hope. This figure was not an apparition, but an inner vision that felt like a real visitation, not something imagined.

She passes Anna on the stairs. Her skirts brush the dust left by Anna’s poor housekeeping, but she doesn’t condemn, she is in full sympathy. She shares the impatience of a talented woman, determined to escape from pettiness and drudgery and make her way in the world. She is often found sitting in the room called Anna’s study, when Anna walks in there in the twilight. She is working at the desk: perhaps writing articles, or learning a foreign language. Finally, strengthened by Anna’s repeated gaze, she is still there when Anna turns on the light. She is a benign spirit; she means no harm. She is refreshingly unsexual in her demeanor, though not at all mannish.

Anna decided the haunting was a good sign. She had lost her job, lost her lover, and possibly her whole society had lost its sexual identity, all in the same short space of time. She remembered, from the time after Lily Rose had died, that bereavement takes strange comforts. If everyone thought she ought to have the psychotropic drugs a doctor would prescribe, what was wrong with taking the medicine supplied by her own brain? My ghost will keep me sane, she thought; and told no one. But you couldn’t get away from the fact that a ghost was a dead person, and it was frightening to have a dead person wandering around. Couldn’t get away from that.

One day she was sitting in the kitchen alone, trying not to admit to herself that she was afraid to go into that room next door, the room that used to be a bicycle stable. If she let herself give way to being frightened, Spence would notice, and he thought she was getting on so well. The world was not behaving normally, or forgetting Anna’s name, but never mind that. Eventually things would calm down. She saw herself slipping into dependency: the wife who doesn’t drive, who doesn’t like to leave the house on her own, who doesn’t work. But it would be okay. The ghost would take over her need to strive. A dripping tap, sunlight. It was the middle of the morning. Spence was out; Jake was at school. She stood up, carefully. Into the narrow hall, hung with its quirky mementos from many lands. Open this other door. The lilies and roses and carnations had died and been thrown away, thank god, but the ghost was there. She was sitting on the piano stool, bold as brass. Her face was indistinct, but the rest of her was very clear.

“What are you doing in my room?” said Anna. “You are going to have to leave!”

The ghost didn’t speak. She had no mouth only a blur of lips. She wasn’t actually a person, she was more like the shell of a chrysalis. She was a state of hope, a woman trying to be free and equal, a woman at the beginning of the great project. She was determined to escape from bondage: to take her fair share of glory and hand over in return, to the man she loved, the great gift of equality. Never thinking
where will it all lead?
Anna wanted more than anything to crawl back inside that shell. It’s better to travel hopefully than arrive, believe it, sister… The ghost just sat there, indistinctly smiling.

“You think you want to be me,” said Anna. “You DON’T. You want to try your wings and prove your worth, and at the end of the story go back to being the angel of the hearth. That’s what you want; I know that’s what you want.”

Some changes are irreversible, but Anna could not believe she was helpless. She waded in. She clasped the ghost to her breast and tried to spread her mouth over its face. It was there and yet not there. It was like a paper balloon in the shape of a woman. She could not swallow this thing. She would have to climb back inside, not through the mouth, which was closed, but through the vagina and anus, through the pores of the paper skin, around the rims of the eye sockets. Somehow, she would force her way… She struggled, but it wouldn’t happen, it just wouldn’t happen. She was lying on the floor by the piano stool, half undressed. Her arms and legs were moving of their own volition, she couldn’t stop them, she heard herself grunting like an animal, and couldn’t stop—

She managed to stop the flailing, and sat up, pulling her clothes together.

Oh no, no more of this. I’m not going to let Jake see this happening to his mummy.

She packed her carry-on bag, quickly and efficiently. No one saw her leave the house. Her faithful retainer had given up his vigil… She’d left her phone behind. She would not need it, she was going to vanish. One lucky thing. She could get away from here a lot further and faster than if she were living in the ghost’s time.