Bleeding London

NEW THERAPY

J udy Tanaka was in her attic room, kneeling on the floor, on the frayed green carpet, her map of London set out in front ot her, perhaps like a board game, perhaps like a prayer mat. Coiled at her side was a loose, unruly heap of rolled plastic sheets that were the same size as the map and transparent, except where they had been marked with crosses. She took the first of these sheets, unrolled it and placed it meticulously over the map. This was her own sheet and she experienced a pang of embarrassment and triumph to see just how many crosses there were, and how many sexual acts and partners these crosses celebrated and recorded. They were not distributed evenly or symmetrically or representatively but they certainly showed how geographically promiscuous she had been.

She placed Stuart’s map on top of her own. Although the crosses were far less dense than on hers they too showed a decently wide distribution. Stuart had achieved by accident what she had deliberately strived for, and of course some of them coincided.

She took more of the plastic sheets, maps made by her other lovers, and as they stacked up one on top of another, London seemed slowly to be disappearing, not only under a rain of crosses but also under the accumulating opaqueness of the plastic sheets.

Finally she placed Mick’s map on the top of the pile. This too coincided with one of her own crosses, but she thought there was a certain beauty about a sheet with a single cross on it, even if it was located in Park Lane, Hackney. It was the most recent and therefore the most clearly visible. It was not lost in the sheen of the plastic, in the reflections of her own history.

Judy knew how deceptive maps can be, how quickly they can become out of date, how places in the real world can have meanings and significances quite out of scale with their cartographic depiction.

It was almost spring. The sun had risen high enough to insinuate its way into the therapy room. The days were lengthening, there were daffodils in the garden and the clocks would soon be moved forward. There was even something spring-like about Judy Tanaka as she walked into the room, as though she had a thrilling piece of news for her therapist.

“Please,” Judy said brightly, “I’d like you to look at my body.”

“Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves?” asked the therapist.

“No, no,” said Judy. “Please look.”

Before the therapist could protest further Judy had stripped naked and was showing her body, revolving on the spot so the therapist could get a full, rounded view. It was immediately obvious that there was a strange serpentine marking curled around Judy’s torso. At a first glance it appeared to be a kind of bruising, but it would have been a strange kind of injury that created such a long, thin, continuous and precise bruise. The therapist looked more closely and saw that in another way it was rather more like a rash, a series of dark-blue spots that linked together to form a long, unbroken line. But again it was the wrong shape for any kind of rash she’d ever seen. For a moment she wondered if it wasn’t a series of cuts and cigarette bums, something self-inflicted, but knowing Judy Tanaka as she did she thought that surely couldn’t be.

Then Judy began to point out certain features of the mark, how it meandered in certain places, how in one place it formed an almost ninety-degree bend. “Much as the River Thames does at the Embankment,” she said archly.

And as the therapist looked more closely she saw that there was indeed something strangely familiar about the shape and design of the mark. Judy continued pointing to various parts of it and said, as though she were a tour guide, “Here we see Chelsea Harbour, here Battersea Reach, here the Isle of Dogs, and here the Upper and Lower Pool…” And before long the therapist was utterly convinced. The rash or bruise or scar or whatever it was formed a perfect representation of the River Thames, a depiction so accurate, so detailed, that you could have used it as a navigational aid.

The therapist reached out a hesitant index finger and ran it along the line of the mark.

“Does that hurt?”

“Not at all,”Judy said. “It’s rather nice actually.”

The therapist’s finger moved further along the map made flesh, from the source on Judy’s left leg, up her flank, across her soft, powdered belly, up towards her breasts, then widening out as it curled behind her back.

“Judy,” the therapist said quietly. “I can see we may need more sessions than I first thought.”