The Temporary (21 page)

Ralph saw himself spring to his feet and put his hands about her throat, but it was only the warm shock of his skin meeting hers that told him it was real, that he was now committing an impossibility, a physical rebellion which demanded to occupy seconds and space and would change everything. Her neck was surprisingly thick, resilient with cords. He squeezed with his hands, frightened by the sudden silence and then amazed by it, and as he looked into her startled eyes his heart flew to his fingertips and for the first time he felt locked with her in an unutterable intimacy. For a moment she was still, long, glorious seconds of quiet in which he looked at the petrified face in his hands and knew himself completely, but then she struggled, clawing at him with rigid fingers, and he let her go. To his surprise she didn’t recoil from him but stayed motionless where she was, the panting sound of her breath the only trace of what had happened. He waited for an aftermath, for something to flow into the vacuum of what he had done, but the room seemed just then to stand still with the evidence of his crime, and hers, the impossibility of retraction. He prayed for her to do something simple, cry perhaps, something which would retrieve them from this desolation where they were too far to be heard or rescued. Finally, she lifted a hand and touched her throat with her fingers, and he saw there the imprints of his own in a ghastly tattoo. His palms burned.

‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said, astonished at the familiar sound of his own voice, its politeness. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

To his surprise he saw her lips unfurl in a curious
half-smile
, and as her eyes grew excited again he realized that he hadn’t changed anything at all, merely delayed the
progress of a strange campaign by which he had long been surrounded.

‘He did it to me too!’ she said, the wing of a shriek flitting across her voice. For a moment he didn’t understand her, but then his shame came back to him with redoubled force, dragging with it all the things she had said, the sound of her voice, the chasm into which he had for a moment frozen his fall. ‘He pushed me against a wall and did it to me right there in the street! I asked him to!’

A cry crowded fluttering in his mouth and he let it escape, hearing its soft progress through silence. With a painful grinding of joints he finally felt himself turn away from everything he knew, from the ugly, familiar place where he had always been, and it was as if something else, a clear and frightening range of vertiginous truths, had been there, just behind him, all along. He saw the sweep of it in seconds, exhilarated and despairing, and felt a rush of knowledge pass through him. He had done wrong, a terrible, intractable wrong reached by a steep stairway of mistakes and failures, from whose top he could view all the things he should have done and realize only how far he was from them. His helplessness could not absolve him: he had failed to defend what was his as it floated alone in its troubled sea, had abandoned where he should have protected, had cast away his fragile creation and left it to cower at the drip of
wine-toxic
blood, the rooting jabs of a stranger, the unfriendly air in which he himself was betrayed and reviled.

‘Poor thing,’ he muttered, hardly knowing what he said. ‘Poor little thing.’

‘Oh, don’t feel sorry for me!’

Their eyes met. Ralph endured the final, fatal collision of their differences and felt laughter jump in his throat. He saw Francine pick up her bag and he gasped, putting out a hand to stop her.

‘Don’t you touch me!’ she shrieked, skipping from the compass of his arm.

‘Please don’t go, not yet.’

He fixed her with his eyes, trying to fill them with some as yet unspoken promise, some prize which might lure her back to him. For a moment he held her, but then the knowledge of his own emptiness leaked from him and her eyes grew bored and looked away. She turned and left the room with his voice still ringing in her absence as if it had been the signal of her liberation, and seconds later he heard her shut the door.

‘Is that you?’

Ralph’s voice was barely more than a whisper. Stephen’s phone had rung for a long time, hundreds of rings, each one pounding like a hammer in his heart. Then finally there had been the click of someone picking it up, and now just the sound of breathing.

‘Is that you?’

‘Who’s this?’ barked Stephen suddenly. ‘Speak up whoever you are or bugger off.’

‘It’s me. Ralph.’

‘It’s Ralphie! It’s my old friend Ralph,’ said Stephen, shouting as if to a room full of people. Ralph could hear static in the background and beyond that, nothing. Stephen was drunk, or stoned, or both, he could tell from his voice. ‘This is a bit of a late night for you, old chap, isn’t it? Rebelling at last?’

Ralph felt himself break again, a strange sensation of inner collapse, something giving beneath him like a rotten bridge and then the blurred velocity of falling. He had felt it several times in the hours since Francine had left.

‘Still there?’ Stephen tapped comically at the receiver.

‘Yes.’

‘What’s up?’

Ralph waited, but nothing came. Now that he was here, claiming what was owed to him, his injury seemed fluid and ungraspable, impossible to lift from the mire which
surrounded
it and hold dripping above his head.

‘You’ve –
wronged
me,’ he said finally, and then instantly regretted it.

‘I what? Speak up. Can’t hear you.’

‘You’ve wronged me.’

Stephen was silent for so long that Ralph felt himself begin to disappear. He heard a dry cough in the receiver, a clearing of the throat.

‘Look, what’s this all about? Are you pissed or something?’

‘No.’

‘You’ve gone a bit nuts, then, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘You’ve wronged me.’

‘Yes, so you keep saying. Can’t help you, I’m afraid.’

Ralph tried to speak and felt a terrible constriction at his throat. He thought of Francine’s face above his hands, the face of a doll, her eyes empty as marbles.

‘She told me,’ he said, his voice strangled. ‘Everything you said to her, she told me. I know everything.’

‘Ah,
I
see,’ said Stephen. His laugh rattled in Ralph’s ear. ‘Well, I wouldn’t take it to heart if I were you. We were both a bit pissed, that’s all.’ He laughed again. ‘My God, she was—’

‘You told her things about me,’ interrupted Ralph. The sound of his own voice excited him.

‘Did I? Can’t say I remember.’

‘Private things. You told her private things.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’

He muttered something else which Ralph couldn’t hear. He sounded distracted, as if he wanted to be off the telephone.

‘All my life,’ began Ralph; but then he stopped, unable to say something so portentous.

‘What was that?’

‘I said, all my life you’ve fucked me up.’ He strained over the words, finding them hard and unnatural. ‘All my life.’

‘Nothing to do with me. Fucked yourself up. Pathetic bastard, that’s your problem. Nobody forced you.’

Tears sprang to Ralph’s eyes and he put a hand to his forehead.

‘You’ve taken things from me!’ he said desperately.

‘Look, you only ever had one thing worth taking. She wasn’t yours anyway. As for the other one, she wasn’t worth the trouble it would have taken to shag her. Those are the facts. Now, why don’t you just toddle off to bed and get off my bloody case?’

‘She’s pregnant!’ burst out Ralph.

Stephen paused for a long time.

‘Not by me, she’s not,’ he said finally. ‘Anyway, you’re well shot of her.’

Ralph felt himself smelted down to his hot, thudding heart, saw the room around him and dissolved into its walls, evaporated in its corners.

‘And you,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I’m well shot of you.’

Ralph could hear the measure of his breathing, up and down.

‘Oh. All right, then.’

‘I don’t want to see you again.’

‘Righty-ho.’

‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, yes, I think you’ve made yourself quite clear. Goodbye.’

The line went abruptly dead and Ralph replaced the
receiver. The silence around him was towering, enormous. He lay back on the sofa, stretching himself out so that he lay flat. Birmingham, Lancaster, Crewe. He closed his eyes and waited.

It was better than she’d expected, especially after the long, unnerving walk through a vast catacomb of cavernous,
neon-lit
corridors in which she had distinctly heard the dungeon sound of dripping, its echo ghostly behind her footsteps. On the way she had come across two or three berobed old women stranded in wheelchairs like spectral, crippled sentries at isolated outposts. She had followed signs to the clinic, pinned intermittently on walls down which green limous streaks ran like eccentric beards, and had finally arrived after what seemed like miles at a newer and more hospitable door made of wood and chrome. She pushed it and entered a hushed and carpeted enclave where telephones quietly chirped and potted plants proudly proclaimed the tiny region’s
luxurious
independence. Its immediate resemblance to offices in which she had worked, or even the agency where she used to go to collect her cheques and receive news of her next assignment, at first soothed and then disturbed her. She instantly warmed to the superiority of her treatment, but remembering the collapsed and crumpled faces of the
corri
dor
’s abandoned residents, their lumpy, useless forms rooted like unattended overflowing bins in concrete wastelands, she wondered at the severity of her own condition that it should elicit such reverence.

‘What name is it, dear?’

She turned and saw a woman standing near her with a clipboard in her hand. She was wearing a white uniform, with a stiff white veil of the same material covering her head. For a moment she thought nervously that the woman was a nun, for the soft, coaching tone of her voice and her ready, pliant face seemed to anticipate tearful confessions.

‘Francine Snaith.’

Francine moved closer to the woman as she said it, in an attempt at discretion. The woman had a plastic rectangle pinned to her breast with ‘Nurse Rogers’ written on it. She could now see the entire waiting-room from where she stood. Other stout, white figures moved soundlessly around a neat row of chairs on which six or seven young girls sat like novices. At one end of the room was a large glass window, behind which a man sat. The telephone rang and he answered it.

‘How are you feeling, Francine?’ said the nurse.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Any sickness?’

‘No.’

‘Good girl,’ she said, nodding and writing something on her clipboard. ‘Why don’t you just pop over and have a word with John behind the window there, and then you can sit down with the other girls.’

Francine crossed the waiting-room. All of the girls looked up in unison as she passed and she glanced back at them. Their pale, worn faces were eager with recognition, as if urging some sense of community upon her, and she looked away. She stood at the glass and waited while John spoke on the telephone.

‘Right,’ he said, nodding. ‘OK, that’s fine.’

He was young, with dark ruffled hair and a lean face, and when he sensed Francine standing there he looked up, smiling, and raised a patient finger. She saw that he was handsome,
and she felt a wrench of frustration at the disagreeable fact of her presence there, the undisguisable nature of its shame.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said cheerfully, putting down the telephone.

‘It’s OK,’ said Francine softly.

‘Name?’

‘Francine.’

‘Francine, Francine,’ he muttered, looking down at a typed list. ‘Francine Snaith, 110 Mill Lane, Kilburn, London. That you?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled.

‘Well, Francine, we’re running a bit late this morning, but you should be called in about half an hour. All right?’

‘That’s fine.’

Francine leaned on the counter, closer to the glass, and he looked up. An expression of surprise flitted across his face and he looked back down at his page.

‘Let’s see. Right, how will you be getting back to Kilburn?’

She hesitated, unprepared for his question and flattered by the concern it implied.

‘I don’t really know.’ She wondered if he would offer to take her home himself.

‘Oh. Well, we normally recommend that patients take a taxi home afterwards rather than public transport. Could you give me the name of the person who’s coming to collect you?’

Francine was silent. A wave of nausea mounted in her stomach and hovered trembling.

‘Nobody.’

He didn’t say anything for a moment, his pen poised.

‘What about your boyfriend?’ he said finally, without looking up.

‘I don’t have one.’

‘What about this name you gave to your doctor? Ralph Loman, is he not your boyfriend?’

‘No.’

‘Is there a friend you could call?’

‘No.’

He raised his head slowly and looked directly into her eyes. His gaze was evaluating, calculating not her assets but her lack of them. She knew that he felt sorry for her. The small office in which he sat was bright and ordered. He raised a hand to his chin and she saw the mocking glitter of a wedding band on his finger.

‘Nobody at all?’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, hating him.

Janice had been meant to come, but that morning, when Francine had opened the door to her darkened bedroom, Janice had called out from beneath a mound of covers that she didn’t feel like it. Her voice had been irritable, and the room had smelt thick and sour. The night before, the woman who owned the boutique where Janice worked had come to the flat and demanded to speak to her. Francine had heard her shouting behind the closed sitting-room door, her voice interspersed with Janice’s indecipherable murmurs.

‘You’re lucky I’ve decided not to take this any further!’ she had said several times, while Francine sat alone in the kitchen. Finally the door had flown open and the woman had marched past her without saying anything. When she had left, Francine had gone into the sitting-room. Janice was sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigarette.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Silly cow gave me the sack,’ said Janice, sucking in smoke. ‘Silly bitch.’

Francine asked her why, but she wouldn’t say.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said. Her face was ugly, abandoned by expression like a room after a party. ‘I’m not worried. I’ve got other sources.’

‘I wish I did,’ said Francine.

Her job at Lancing & Louche had finished a week ago. Lynne had been odd about it, her voice unfriendly on the telephone. When Francine went to the agency to collect her money the receptionist said that Lynne was in a meeting and gave her the cheque herself. She had called once or twice after that, but the receptionist had told her that there wasn’t anything for her, and when Lynne finally called it was to say that she was very sorry but they were going to have to take her off their books.

‘Do you?’ said Janice, suddenly giving her a cool,
appraising
look; a look which reminded Francine of the looks men usually gave her. Janice looked at her for a long time. It made her nervous. ‘I might be able to help you out,’ she said finally, sending a long finger of smoke towards her.

‘You’d better sit down,’ said John. His manner was
disengaged
. ‘One of the nurses will let you know when they’re ready.’

Francine turned and saw that the other girls’ eyes were still on her. Their gaze was unembarrassed, knowing. There was an empty chair at the end of their row, but she walked past it and sat on one opposite. Eventually their eyes dropped to their laps, except those of a girl with long red hair who sat directly across from Francine. She was staring at a point above Francine’s head. She looked young, like a child.
Francine
saw that her face was filled with immediate terror, as if someone was about to attack her. She looked away abruptly, skirting along the row until her eyes fixed on a very fat girl slumped in a chair to her left. The girl’s face was vast and pasty, the bumps of her features resembling the deformities of vegetables, sly potato eyes, a lumpy tuber nose. She sat miserably with her legs apart, her thighs melting over the sides of the chair like warm cheese. Francine stared at her, trying to imagine the coupling which had brought her here, the kisses on her doughy breasts. The thought repelled her.
She wondered how someone could have chosen that girl, selected her from others, and felt her own mysteries crumble and spoil.

‘Miss Franklin?’ called a nurse, coming into the waiting area.

The young red-haired girl shot to her feet and Francine was disconcerted to see that large, childish tears were rolling down her cheeks. An older woman whom Francine hadn’t noticed stood up beside her and gently put an arm around her shoulders, whispering something in her ear. Her hair was red too, streaked with grey, and she realized to her amazement that the woman must be her mother. A gorge of jealousy rose to her mouth.

‘Come on, love,’ said the nurse softly, taking her by the hand. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.’

The girl strained like an animal, resisting her hand, and for the first time Francine felt a bolt of fear fly through her. She gripped her bag, seeing herself quite clearly running from the room, her feet echoing down the empty corridors, out into the car park past impervious porters and sleeping ambulances, melting into the busy pavement along which waiting traffic throbbed. The singularity of her imprisonment erected its swift bars around her and she struggled against them as her thoughts reasoned her back into the room like diplomats. There was no escape from that which ticked like a bomb inside her, that which her enemies had implanted and she was entrusting those around her to remove. She calmed herself with thoughts of the purge which would free her, the gratifying image of Ralph, Stephen, the hungry blockage in her belly, the confusing maelstrom of her past, all of it sucked
mechanically
from her, leaving her new and gleaming, a vacuum to be filled with delightful, unknown things. She had been told it wouldn’t hurt. It didn’t matter anyway. Her body felt heavy and used, sluggish with nausea and mistakes. She almost
looked forward to its cleansing. Afterwards she would begin again.

A nurse walked past her, her uniform efficient and
trustworthy
. It wasn’t that bad here, after all. She had wanted a private clinic, of course, but she hadn’t had the money and she couldn’t have asked Ralph. It would have spoiled her plan of telephoning him afterwards to tell him what she had done. She thought of telling him she had gone to a private clinic and making him pay her back. It was the least he could do. She needed money. Anxiety closed around her as she thought of the rent, counting weeks with a beating heart. She hardly had enough to last her until the weekend. She had to get another job. Lynne wouldn’t give her a reference, she’d said as much. Personnel had lodged a complaint. Francine was too
unreliable
these days, and she had her own reputation to consider. There was something else, Janice’s offer, waiting darkly like a stranger at the door. It made her uncomfortable and she shied from it dimly. She would think about it later. As she shrank from it, it caught her in its ropes and reeled her back, insinuating itself, not discouraged by her firm rejection. Her thoughts were relenting to its persuasions. What else did she have? It might take her weeks to find a job, and then another week’s delay until she was paid. It would only be for a while, a temporary thing, just until she sorted herself out. It was easy, Janice said it was. It wasn’t how you would think. You didn’t have to do anything if you didn’t want to. She knew people, she said, people who would really appreciate Francine. She had laughed at how shocked she was.

‘How else do you think I could afford this?’ she had said, raising her glass to Francine and gesturing at the room.

The door to the waiting-room opened and a man in a bomber jacket came in. He stopped, looking around.

‘Over ’ere, Ian,’ said the fat girl.

He grinned, and Francine watched him hesitantly cross the
room, his hands stuffed in his pockets. The other girls shifted up the row to make room for him and he sat down, putting his arm around the fat girl’s shoulders.

‘All right?’ he said, his face close to hers.

‘Yeah,’ she said, patting his knee.

The girls were watching them with silent interest.

‘Couldn’t get off earlier. Barry didn’t turn up for his shift till ten past. Bugger was out on the piss last night.’

‘Was he?’ The girl laughed, her mouth forcing up
mountains
of flesh on her cheeks. ‘That’s typical, that is.’

‘Miss Snaith?’ The nurse arrived again with her clipboard. ‘Is Miss Snaith here?’

Francine froze for a minute and then stood up.

‘Right, dear, come along with me.’

She led Francine through a swinging door at the other end of the room. Beyond it was a long white ward with military rows of beds along its walls. In one of them, the young girl lay immobile, her red hair streaming like blood across the pillows. Her mother sat beside her, reading a book.

‘I didn’t know I’d have to go to bed,’ said Francine, panic beginning to struggle in her again at the sight of the ward.

‘Oh, it’s not for long,’ said the nurse. ‘We’ve just got to give you a tiny injection, and afterwards you’ll want time to wake up. Just slip your clothes off for me now behind this curtain. There’s a robe hanging beside the bed.’

She manoeuvred Francine into a cubicle and then drew a flowered curtain briskly around her. Francine took off her jacket. She had only been in hospital once before, for her appendix, when she was a child. She remembered her mother stroking her forehead, her father nervous at the foot of the bed, jumping out of the doctor’s way. A sharp consciousness of her loneliness pricked her, and then she felt something else, something heavier. She wished Janice had come, saw her huddled beneath the bedclothes, her voice angry. The thought
of not liking Janice made her panic. She needed her. She had said they would do it together. Quickly she took off the rest of her clothes and was surprised by the sight of her body in the white light. It looked mottled and bumpy with gooseflesh, and the purple tunnels of her veins seemed alarmingly close to the skin. She saw the spread of her hips, the pouch of her stomach, and realized that she had put on weight.