Case Histories

Chapter 13. Amelia

Julia hauled a scuttle full of coal into the sitting room, escorted by a limping Sammy. "I can't believe Victor never put in central heating," she gasped, dropping the scuttle to the floor so that coal dust and tiny pieces of coal, like polished, unworked jet, spilled on the carpet. Amelia frowned at her and said, "I've just cleaned in here," and Julia said, "That's what will be written on your gravestone," and Amelia said, "Oh, really, by you?" and Julia said, "God, I'm gagging for it, aren't you?" and Amelia said, "Apropos of what exactly?"

"Two weeks of enforced celibacy since we've been here," Julia said. "it's doing my head in, it really is. I'm having to wank every night."

"Oh, for God's sake, Julia, you're so crude. It's disgusting." Amelia hated that word, the slaters and brickies used it all the time, the hairdressers too – the girls were just like the boys. "You wanker!" – yelling at each other across the room.

"What would you call it then?" Julia asked, and Amelia said, "I don't know – pleasuring yourself," which made Julia fall about laughing and say, "God, don't tell me you don't do it, Milly. Everyone does it, it's normal. I'm sure you do it and think about Henry – oh, no, you don't think about Henry. I bet you think about Jackson !" Julia seemed particularly delighted with this idea. Amelia wanted to slap her. "You do it, don't you, Milly? You frig yourself and think about Jackson!"

"You are disgusting, Julia. Offensively disgusting." Amelia knew she had turned as red as her tights – donned especially in case Jackson dropped in today because he had seemed rather taken with them at Victor's funeral. She'd woken up that morning and felt a good feeling, as if the blood in her veins were warm honey, and she thought, He's going to visit this morning, and she had put on some of Julia's makeup and left her hair loose because it was more girlish and she'd made a pot of coffee and warmed up the stale croissants that Julia had bought the day before. And she'd picked some flowers from the garden (hard to find among the weeds) and put them in a vase so that Jackson would look at her and see that she was a woman. But he hadn't come, of course. She'd never had any intuition, womanly or otherwise. It had just been wishful thinking.

Julia sang out, "Milly's got a new boyfriend. Poor old Henry. Milly likes Jackson," as if she were eight years old again. Part of Julia would always be eight years old, just as part of Amelia would always be eleven years old – the age she was when the world stopped.

"How old are you, Julia?"

"Not as old as you."

"I'm leaving the room before I hit you."

Amelia splashed cold water from the kitchen tap on her cheeks. She could still hear Julia chortling away to herself in the living room. If she started up again she was going to yank her head off. Julia wouldn't let it go though, following her into the kitchen, saying, "Jesus, Milly, you're so uptight, I can't imagine what you and Henry are like in the bedroom." Neither could Amelia because, of course, Henry didn't exist. He was an invention, conjured out of nothing, born of an exasperation with Julias constant nagging about Amelia's celibate state and (horrors) her insistent offer to "set her up" with someone. "I have someone, thank you," she informed Julia irritably, after one-too-many intimate inquiries from her sister. "A colleague, in the department" – and, searching for the first male name she could think of, Amelia came up with "Henry," which was the name of her downstairs neighbor, Philip's, dog, a revolting little Pekingese whose eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of its head any minute. "If Henry was a dog, what kind of dog would he be?" Julia asked, predictably, and Amelia had, unthinkingly, answered, "Pekingese" so that Julia frowned and said, "Oh, poor Milly."

Since then, the fictional Henry had gradually acquired the accretions of a personality. He was a little on the bald and paunchy side, a beer drinker rather than a spirits man, and once, long ago, had a wife who died of cancer and whom he had nursed, devotedly, at home. Henry had no children but he had a tabby cat called Molly, who was a good mouser. Lying, Amelia discovered, was all about the details.

Henry and Amelia conducted a sedate fictitious relationship that revolved around theatergoing, art-house cinema, Italian restaurants, country pubs, and invigorating walks. They had spent two weekends away, one in the Mendips and one in North Devon, Amelia carefully researching both locations on the Internet in case Julia proved curious about the geography or the history, although, naturally, Julia only wanted to know about the food and the sex ("Oh, come on, Milly. Don't be coy"). It was important not to make Henry too interesting because then Julia might actually want to meet him, so sex was "a bit routine" but nonetheless "nice" – a word which repelled Julia. Recently, Amelia had revealed that Henry was a keen golfer, a pastime that was guaranteed to result in indifference on Julia's part.

Henry had proved such a success with Julia that Amelia had introduced him into the workplace as well. He served as a useful antidote to the looks of pity and amusement that always seemed to be her lot. She had heard the other lecturers call her "spinsterish" and she knew that a couple of people thought she was a lesbian. The idea of lesbianism made her feel slightly squeamish. Julia said she had had sex with women, dropped it into the conversation with the same casual air as if she were talking about which supermarket she preferred or the latest books she'd read. Amelia had made a point of not looking surprised because that was the kind of reaction Julia loved, of course. Was there no limit to the kind of thing Julia would do? Would she do it with a dog?

"Bestiality," Julia ruminated. "Well, only if I had to."

"Had to? For a part?"

"No, of course not. To save your life, for example."

Would Amelia have sex with a dog to save Julia's life? What an appalling test.

Henry was useful at college too. As far as the inmates of the staff room were concerned, he was someone that her sister had introduced her to. Because Julia was an actress they all believed she must live a glamorous life, which was usually annoying for Amelia but sometimes useful. This Henry lived in Edinburgh, making him inaccessible and giving her something to do on the weekends – "Oh, just flying up to Scotland, Henry's taking me fishing," which is the kind of thing she imagined people doing in Scotland – she always thought of the Queen Mother, incongruous in mackintosh and waders, standing in the middle of a shallow brown river (somewhere on the outskirts of Brigadoon, no doubt) and casting a line for trout. Amelia had never been farther north than York, and then only to see Julia in pantomime, playing Dick Whittington's cat in an interpretation that seemed to suggest that the animal was permanently on heat. Amelia envisaged that between York and the royal-infested Scottish Highlands there was a grimy wasteland of derelict cranes and abandoned mills and betrayed, yet still staunch, people. Oh and moorland, of course, vast tracts or brooding landscape under lowering skies, and across this heath strode brooding, lowering men intent on reaching their ancestral houses, where they were going to fling open doors and castigate orphaned, yet resolute, governesses. Or – preferably – the brooding, lowering men were on horseback, black horses with huge muscled haunches, glistening with sweat –

"Milly?"

"What?"

"You're not listening to me, I was saying that we could use some of the money from the house to take a really good holiday." Julia was laying a fire in the grate, folding and pleating sheets of newspaper into makeshift firelighters. Amelia frowned and turned the Television on. At first, Amelia had suggested to Julia that they might watch the more cultural channels, Performance or Discovery or, at a pinch, TV5 to improve their rusty French (although unfortunately finding TV5 seemed to involve trawling through the porn and the sport), but this idea had been soundly squashed by Julia "Get a life, Milly") and now they spent long fireside hours in front of reruns of seventies sitcoms and creaky dramas, Bergerac, followed by Poldark, and topped off by Only Fools and Horses, which seemed to run on a continual loop in the ether.

"I mean a really good holiday," Julia said. "An African safari or a Nepalese trek, visit the temples at Machu Picchu or take a boat to the Antarctic. What do you think, Milly?"

Amelia had never traveled because she'd never had anyone to travel with. Julia was the only person she had ever been on holiday with – once to Portugal (which had been pleasant) and once to Morocco (which had been a nightmare) so that Amelia felt her view of the world was through a small pane of glass, yet the idea of going out there, into the world, high up on some mountain, in the middle of an ocean, in some dangerous, foreign place, far from the safety of an English sitting room, made her instantly dizzy and sick with fear.

"And you could surprise Henry," Julia carried on blithely, "take him to New York or Paris for the weekend, stay somewhere gorgeous, the Georges Cinq or the Bristol –"

"Your fire's going out."

More often than not, "Henry" would come down to Oxford for the weekend, and if anyone asked her, Amelia would report back on Monday morning that they had spent a "lovely" weekend – a drive down to Cliveden, a "gorgeous" lunch in Bray. Not many people did ask, but there was a general agreement among her fellow workers that since she had met Henry, Amelia was a little less brittle and abrasive.

The version of Henry that was for her work colleagues was slightly less bald and paunchy than the one she had concocted for Julia. He was also more active and outgoing – all that fishing – and decidedly better off ("In finance, oh God, don't ask me what, it's all Greek to me"). She especially liked to flaunt the more dashing aspects of this Henry to Andrew Vardy, a fellow teacher in the "communications" department and the only man that Amelia had ever – in reality – had sex with.

Amelia had sex with Andrew Vardy ten years ago because she was afraid she would live and die an old maid. Because it had seemed ridiculous to be a virgin at thirty-five years old in the dying years of the twentieth century. Because she didn't understand how she was as good as dead without ever having lived. She supposed she must be in this virginal state because she was shy and easily embarrassed and sex seemed so downright daunting (and, let's face it, vaguely disgusting). At university, she'd had a reputation for being prim and proper, but she always expected that some boy (or some brooding, lowering man) would breach this defensive strategy and sweep away her inhibitions and admit sexual passion into her life. But no one, brooding, lowering, or otherwise, seemed to want her. Sometimes she wondered if perhaps she gave off the wrong scent, or no scent at all, because it was as primitive as that, wasn't it, like cats and queen bees and musk deer?

Perhaps more curious than the fact that there was no one who wanted Amelia was that she, in turn, wanted no one – apart from men in nineteenth-century novels, which put a whole new spin on the idea of "unattainable." Even Sylvia wasn't a virgin. She slept with dozens of boys before her "conversion." And if Sylvia could find boyfriends – Sylvia, who had grown into an ugly duck, not a swan – then why couldn't Amelia? For the longest time Amelia waited for someone to appear who would make her heart race and her brain fog and her intellect crumble and when it didn't happen she thought perhaps she had been intended by nature to be celibate, that she should rejoice (privately anyway) in this vestal state and rather than fretting about her unbroken hymen she should see it as a trophy unattainable to mere mortal men. (A dubious kind of prize, admittedly.)

She would die a noble virgin queen, a new Gloriana. This was during a period when she was having a kind of breakdown – mostly to do with the impossibility of "communicating" with the brickies and slaters and hairdressers and partly to do with the utter futility of life (although anyone with half a brain must surely be mired in existential gloom all the time) – and then, just when she was at her weakest and most vulnerable, Andrew Vardy said to her, "You know, Amelia, if you ever want to have sex, I'd be happy to oblige." Just like that – as if she were a cow that needed servicing, or a virgin who needed deflowering. Could he tell she was intact by looking at her, that her maidenhead was unbroken? How much nicer all those old terms were. What would the slaters say? "Popping your cherry." They probably didn't even know any virgins. And they didn't have any decent terms for sex, all they did was "shag" (every hour God gave them, from the sound of it). And the girls just the same.

She had taken a maidenhead fern in to college, to brighten the godless gloom of the staff room, a cutting she had taken from a plant belonging to Philip, the downstairs neighbor with the Pekingese. Someone, some sleazy old duffer who behaved as if the staff room were the library of a London gentleman's club, said, "Ah, some of these old English terms for plants, wonderfully venereal, maidenhead fern, a virgin's pubes – what could be more delicious?" which elicited sniggering from several people (including women, for heaven's sake, didn't they know any better?). Amelia would have liked to break the plant pot over his head. "And the cuckoopint," he persisted, "sounds innocent, doesn't it, but 'pint' is short for 'pintle' or 'penis'!" How would he feel if she chopped his off? That would shut him up. She busied herself with books as if she had a class to teach, which she didn't, and tried to pretend that her face wasn't the deep crimson shade of shame and humiliation. Thankfully, the plant soon withered and died and Amelia refused to see that as metaphorical in any way but when Andrew Vardy made his overture a few weeks later she surprised herself with her response.

Nowadays, when she viewed Andrew Vardy across the jaded. Cup-A-Soup scented air of the staff room, she felt completely baffled as to why she would ever have – vile to remember – got naked with him, let alone conjoin intimate, delicate parts of her anatomy with his ugly, goosefleshed ones. The only man she'd ever had and he wasn't even remotely good looking. His skin was pitted and pinched by ancient acne and he had a little gay mustache that his wife should have told him to get rid of. He wasn't gay, not at all, he was a Catholic and had five children and he was on the short side, in fact he was slightly shorter than Amelia, but he could be funny, and, dear God, that was something, and for two years they had shared cynical little exchanges over coffee and the occasional longer, more philosophical conversation during one of the college cafeteria's atrocious lunches. Andrew was a skinflint (he had five children, after all, he said) and only offered to pay for Amelia on the days when the first-year hotel management students had to cook and serve a three-course lunch at half the normal price (because the risk of dying from food poisoning was twice as high).

Amelia was flattered by the fact that Andrew Vardy enjoyed her company, because no one else seemed to, and so it was that when, at the fag end of a wearisome day, when they were the last two people left in the staff room, and he spoke his honeyed words of seduction (to recap – "You know, Amelia, if you ever want to have sex, I'd be happy to oblige"), she had thought, yes, why not?

Not right away of course, not there in the staff room – how awful would that have been, if he'd ravished her among the crumpled newspapers and the old mugs with their dregs of Nescafe while she wondered if the janitor was going to put his head round the door. But, no, he simply picked up his rucksack and said, "Good-bye, then, see you tomorrow," as if nothing of any significance had passed between them.

Before Andrew Vardy, Amelia imagined that sex would be (somehow, God knows how) an amalgam of the mystical and the coarsely animalistic, a warm and blurry experience that would transcend the mechanics. What she hadn't imagined was that it would be banal and rather tiresome. Although, unfortunately, still vaguely disgusting.

"Be bold," she thought and invited him round for "a cup of coffee, one evening," she was pretty sure that both of them knew what that meant but if it turned out to be just that – a cup of coffee – then she wouldn't look too stupid. She bought a woman's magazine that had a sealed book on the cover announcing that it contained "Sex Tips to Drive Him Wild" and tried (and failed) to learn some of them off by heart. She felt as if she were preparing for an exam that she was bound to fail. And why would anyone want hot candle wax dripped on their nipples anyway? Would he do that to her? Surely not. "Undress slowly," the book advised.

"All men appreciate a sexy striptease." Amelia had rather hoped that they might keep their clothes on throughout the whole process. Nonetheless, she shaved her legs and armpits, although for the life of her she couldn't see what was wrong with body hair, and painted (rather badly) her toenails, and showered and perfumed herself with something French that Julia had left behind after a visit. She felt as if she were preparing herself for a sacrifice. She kept ready a very good bottle of Bordeaux and bought stuffed olives and peanuts as if she were readying herself for a Tupperware party. She had been to a Tupperware party once, at the invitation of a woman who was a tutor in the beauty and hairdressing department, and had bought a very useful cereal dispenser. It was the only party of any description that she had been to in five years.

The olives and peanuts were not a sex tip, although the book did suggest doing something with popcorn that Amelia considered belonged in a blue movie, not a front-of-counter woman's magazine. You would never think that sex was meant for procreation of the species, that it was simply about male and female organs accommodating each other for a biological purpose. Certainly not according to the authors of "Sex Tips to Drive Him Wild," for whom it seemed to be a case of stuffing every orifice with anything that came to hand.

For five nights in a row, she waited. By the sixth night Amelia began to wonder if she had misheard him, if he had offered to "oblige" her with something else, the loan of a book or a computer program. In the staff room, no mention was made between them of coffee or sex, the only conversation of any kind they had was about how you had to pretend that the slaters had fulfilled all their criteria-based topics of learning in order to get them through the course and off your hands. She stopped preparing herself every night, her legs grew bristles, and she had forgotten all the sex tips, so, of course, Sod's Law, Andrew Vardy turned up at the door when she was in her oldest clothes, painting a little bedside table she had bought in an auction.

No flowers, no chocolates, no wooing – she had rather expected some wooing – and when she said, "Would you like a cup of coffee?" he actually smirked and she offered the good wine only because she knew she couldn't go through with the experience in a cold-stone-sober state. She emptied the peanuts and the olives into glass dishes and put them on the coffee table. Is this what other people did? Other women, preparing for a lover? Didn't they rub themselves with perfumed oils and unguents and comb out their hair, lie down on silken sheets, and present their pomegranate breasts for their lover's kisses? Not put out hors d'oeuvres, surely?

As soon as they sat on the sofa he started kissing her and she could feel how dry and chapped his lips were. He was wearing the same clothes he'd worn into college that day and he smelled stale. Then he was tugging at her paint-stained T-shirt and pawing at her breasts, kneading them as if they were lumps of plasticine, at the same time as he was undoing his trousers so that she wondered what had been the point of mugging up on all that foreplay. Squashed into the sofa cushions, she couldn't really see what he was doing and when she realized he was putting on a condom she felt incredibly embarrassed (which was ridiculous) although part of her wanted to tell him to stop right there so that they could have a discussion about Catholicism and the ethics of contraception – he had five children, after all, was it one rule for his wife and one for his mistress (there was definitely a certain frisson in applying that word to herself)? And, in general, did he really believe in papal infallibility because she had often wondered how an intelligent person (Sylvia, for example) could believe such nonsense, but the moment for an argument over dogma had already passed because he was fitting himself inside her (so much smoother and colder than she'd expected) and she had to stifle the instinct to push him off because it felt so uncomfortable and unnatural. Then they rolled about awkwardly for a bit, scattering the peanuts everywhere and knocking over the wine (which was incredibly careless of him) and then suddenly he let out a low animal sound like a cow giving birth and the next second, his limp thing had slid out of her and flopped like a small dead goldfish on her thigh.

Amelia looked at the ceiling and saw a crack she'd never noticed. Had it always been there or was the house subsiding? She looked at the floor where the peanuts had been broadcast and where the Bordeaux had made a huge stain on the pale carpet, like weak blood, and she wondered if even professional cleaning would be able to remove it.

Andrew Vardy pulled himself and his clothing together – there was a patch of curdled white foam on the shoulder of his jacket that Amelia suspected was baby sick. Her insides seemed to sag. "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to go, Amelia," he said, as if she'd been begging him to stay. "I promised Bernie I'd pick up a pint of milk." Amelia supposed she had been fitted in with the groceries. Pint of milk and a quick shag. So she'd seen him to the door and he'd kissed her on the cheek and said, "That was bloody fantastic,'' and then he tossed an olive into his mouth as if it were a party trick and then he was gone! Almost skipping down the stairs while Henry, the Pekingese, yapped furiously at him from somewhere down below. There was another darker stain on the sofa and it took Amelia a few seconds to realize that it was not the Bordeaux but her own blood. Her knees felt weak and she slumped down onto the floor. She felt damaged. She heard Andrew Vardy's child-soiled Passat drive away and started to cry.

She wanted Jackson. Desperately. And yes, she did lie in her bed and think about him and pleasure herself. Christ, what a stupid term. Mr. Brodie would save you, Julia had said when she declared he was a German shepherd. Amelia wanted to be saved by Jackson, she wanted that more than anything. Jackson, the idea of Jackson, was a hope and a promise and a comfort, it was a sun-warmed pebble in the hand, the scent of wet roses in the rain, it was the possibility of change. Maybe she should just say to him, "If you ever feel like sex, Jackson, I'd be happy to oblige."

She started to undress for bed. It was early, too early to go to bed really. There was still light in the sky outside and she remembered how when she was a child she used to like going to bed in summer when it was still light because she was afraid of the dark. That was before Olivia disappeared, after that there was no safety to be had in either the light or the dark.

She regarded her naked body in the foxed, silver-spotted mirror on Sylvia's small wardrobe. Her flesh looked like curd cheese, she had rolls of fat, like the Michelin Man, her belly folded over, her breasts swinging with their own weight, she looked as if she'd borne a dozen children, she looked like one of those ancient fertility symbols carved from stone. Yet there was nothing fertile about her, was there? She was passing the point of childbearing, her womb was shrinking unseen inside her. "I've still got time to push one out," Julia said to her yesterday in her usual disgusting way. Amelia no longer had time to push one out, soon the planet would have no further use for her. No one had ever found her attractive, no one had ever wanted her, even Victor hadn't wanted her, her own rather had found her too ugly to seduce – a howl cut into her thoughts, a terrifying noise as though Julia was having her bowels ripped out, a noise that presaged absolute horror and Amelia grabbed her dressing gown and ran downstairs.

Julia was lying on the floor in a corner of the kitchen and at first Amelia thought something dreadful had happened to her, but then she realized that she had her arms clasped around Sammy's body. His eyes were dull, everything about him was dull as if he were fading, but when he heard Amelia's distressed voice his tail gave a weak little beat. "I'll call the vet, shall I?" Amelia said, and Julia, her voice muffled because her face was pressed into Sammy's neck, said, "I think it's too late. I think he's had a stroke."

"Then we have to call the vet,"

"No, really, Milly, he's on his way out, he's an old dog. Don't upset him." Julia held one of his paws and kissed it. She murmured soothing words into the dying dog's ear, she kissed his ears, his nose, his mouth, rubbed her face on the white hairs of his muzzle. Amelia hated her for being the one who thought she was doing the right thing. "Just stroke him," Julia said but Amelia was raking through the yellow pages looking for the number for an out-of-hours vet and so she missed the moment when the dog died and only realized he was gone when Julia got up from the floor, covered in dog hair and her face all creased. She looked as if she had been hanging onto the dog for a long time.

She couldn't bear it. She had phoned Jackson because she wanted him to stop the pain. She didn't want anyone else to stop the pain, just Jackson. She wanted him to take her in his arms and soothe her the way Julia had soothed the dog. ("Please, Jackson, please come, I need you." There had been something thrilling about speaking such passionate, desperate words. She had felt passionate. She had felt desperate.) What she hadn't wanted was for him to arrive on the doorstep looking pissed off (oh, God, slater language) and she certainly hadn't wanted him arriving on the doorstep with a small child in tow. His small child. She had never imagined him having a child, of course, she had never asked. Did he have a wife? She asked him that, when he was hardly over the threshold, accusing like a madwoman, she knew she looked like a madwoman, her hair all over the place, her face ravaged by crying, her breasts flapping around inside the oversize dressing gown. "I didn't know you were married, Mr. Brodie," spitting out the words as if he had betrayed her. The girl looked upset and Jackson was even more annoyed because she was upsetting the girl and it was Julia who calmed the situation, saying, "I'm sorry, Mr. Brodie, we're not ourselves tonight, I'm afraid poor Sammy passed away." After that it was all a little shadowy, Julia kept pouring from the brandy bottle, and the child had been almost unnaturally interested in the dead dog, stroking its lifeless fur, saying, "Poor dead dog," until Amelia wanted to slap her because the dog didn't belong to her, forgetting that it was actually Victor's dog. Jackson had explained to the girl that the dog was happy in dog heaven and then Julia had helped Amelia up to bed and that's where she'd been ever since, sobbing her heart out in a quiet but nonetheless ugly fashion, and it was a crying that wouldn't stop because it encompassed too much.

She was crying from a general sense of wretchedness (which everyone was allowed now and then, surely), and crying for herself and her dried-up meaningless little life. She couldn't bear it, she really couldn't. Crying for Victor and Olivia and Rosemary and for Rascal (who died two years after Olivia disappeared). And she was crying because she'd only ever had sex with Andrew Vardy and because Mozart had died young and Sammy had died old, and because she was fat and ugly and had to teach the slaters and was never going to be wrapped in the comfort of Jackson's arms.

And she was crying because she didn't believe in Jesus or dog heaven and no one was ever going to lie in bed with her on a Sunday morning and read the papers or rub her back and say, "Is there anything I can do for you?" And because there was no happiness, only emptiness. And because she wanted to be sixteen years old with long shiny hair (which she'd never had), and she wanted to be looking anxiously out of an upstairs window and hear her mother downstairs shouting, "He's here," and then she would run lightly down the stairs and climb into the car where at the wheel would be her good-looking boyfriend and they would drive away and have warm, blurry sex somewhere and then he would bring her back home and her family would be waiting. Victor would acknowledge her with a gruff paternal nod as she came in the door, contrary teenage Julia would ignore her while willowy first-year student Sylvia would smile in a superior manner. Somewhere, in the guest bedroom perhaps, the vague unformed shape of a five-year old Annabelle could be found sleeping. And Rosemary, her mother, would ask her, in a womanly, conspiratorial way, if she'd had a nice time and then would offer her hot milk and honey (which she was sure she had never done in real life) and perhaps before she dropped into the sweet untroubled sleep of a pretty sixteen-year-old, Amelia would look in on Olivia, eight years old and safely asleep in her own bed.

Sometime in the night, Julia came into her bedroom and lay down on the bed, putting her arms around her and holding her the way she had the dying Sammy. And Julia said, "Everything's all right, Milly, really it is," which was such a huge, wonderful lie that it wasn't even worth arguing about.