The Chrysalis Read online

  Her relief was overwhelming. Zac could feel it filling the room. It gave her the confidence to ask the question she really wanted to ask. The one she wanted to ask the minute she saw him dressed in her shirt. She closed the fridge door and looked at him directly for the first time.

  “Is it me… you don’t fancy me?”

  “No, Abbie. Honestly, it isn’t about you.”

  She came and sat down on the chair next to him.

  “Zac, is this… is it just some weird sexual thing? Some experiment?”

  A feeling of hopelessness seized Zac. There were no words.

  Abbie tried to laugh.

  “Something you want to do together?”

  He understood the question. She felt excluded. The hurtful thing for her was imagining a whole facet of his sexuality that didn’t include her. She was pushing her own boundaries, trying to find what she could be part of, what she could tolerate. He felt strangely moved by her desperation. But this wasn’t something he wanted to “do together”. It was expressing who he was.

  Women wanted to be the excluders, not the excluded, Zac thought, watching her. Ever since he had been a child, he had gravitated towards female company. He had liked the less physically robust nature of their interaction, the constant verbalising of what was going on in their heads, the less combative nature of their imaginations. They were more constantly creative in their play than the boys he hung around with, but their make-believe was based on a kind of reality; they were more likely to pretend to own homes and drive cars and have children who gave them no end of anxiety than they were to imagine they were astronauts invading another planet, or that a shoal of sharks was about to engulf them and turn the sea red with blood.

  But they could be just as cruel as boys. Zac was different from the other boys and though neither they – nor he for that matter – could identify exactly what his “otherness” was, they certainly knew it was there. Girls were more tolerant of that otherness but never quite allowed him into their inner circle. He remembered once sitting with some of Elicia’s friends when one suggested they play ‘my favourite’.

  “You start, Elicia.”

  “My favourite colour is orange because it makes me feel happy and it reminds me of ice lollies on warm days,” said Elicia.

  “My favourite tea is pizza and chips because I love dipping the hot chips into the melted cheese!” said her friend Rachel.

  “Mm!” said Elicia.

  “My favourite ice cream flavour is mint chocolate chip because… just because it is!” said Wendy.

  They all giggled.

  Zac was enchanted by the game, knew exactly what he wanted to say.

  “Can I go next?” he asked.

  Three pairs of eyes swivelled towards him. They waited expectantly.

  “My favourite cloth is -”

  “Favourite what?” said Rachel.

  “Cloth,” repeated Zac. “Material.”

  Rachel looked at Elicia who shrugged.

  “My favourite cloth,” said Zac, “is silk because it is soft and lovely on your skin and feels like someone is stroking you and my mum has a pale pink nightdress that is made of silk and it’s really pretty and I like when she cuddles me when she’s wearing it.”

  There was silence for a second before all three girls erupted suddenly into laughter, bending their heads together and clutching each other’s arms.

  “Zac, you’re weird!” said Rachel.

  “Shut up!” said Elicia, though Zac wasn’t sure if this was addressed to him or to Rachel.

  “Weird!” said Wendy.

  “For a boy!” added Rachel.

  Zac blushed pink to his ears. What had he said? He had played the game, hadn’t he? What had he said that none of them would?

  Elicia said nothing, suddenly aware of the depth of Zac’s discomfort and torn in her loyalties.

  “Let’s go play on the swing,” said Rachel, jumping up, and Wendy immediately raced her across the field.

  Elicia hesitated.

  “Coming Zac?” she said.

  He shook his head. Elicia looked at the retreating figures of her friends.

  “Wait for me,” she shouted, before taking off after them across the park.

  Zac suddenly became aware of Abbie talking.

  “So you’ve done it before…” she was saying, a statement rather than a question.

  He nodded.

  “How long? What age?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Oh my God!”

  Zac reached across the table and took her hand. She did not move but he could feel her resistance, her desire to pull away from him. She left her hand resting in his for a minute then shifted awkwardly and stood up.

  “I’ll make the tea.”

  She didn’t want to make tea, Zac thought watching her. She just couldn’t bear to have him touch her.

  Abbie lifted the kettle then put it back down again without pouring,

  “It’s like I never knew you,” she said, keeping her back to him.

  How could she possibly know him, Zac thought. He didn’t even know himself.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Marianne

  It is hard to describe the extent of my contempt for Shona. She has no depth of understanding, no incisive capacity for analysis; she is just a squelching mass of emotional impulses and misplaced empathy. There is something pallid about her: the thin, straw-like hair and watery blue eyes, the skin that has the grainy, grey tone of a cadaver. Plain women like me have a respect either for the beauty we can’t have, or for the acuteness of mind that we have had to develop. Shona has neither. I have no interest in Shona.

  She comes after breakfast, her leather sandals squeaking on the floor as she walks towards me with that inane smile she has.

  “Hello Marianne,” she says, pulling a chair up beside me.

  I glance up at her but say nothing.

  “How are we today?” she says.

  I have no idea how YOU are, I think to myself.

  “Marianne?” she says, patting my hand gently as though I haven’t heard her.

  “Nurse! Nurse! Help me!”

  Annie’s plaintive wail seems to fill the lounge. Shona turns.

  “What’s wrong, Annie?”

  “Nurse! Nurse! Help me…” Annie seems locked into the wailing, unaware that Shona has even spoken. She is slumped into the corner of a settee as if she has no backbone to keep her upright, a tiny heap of bones with pleading eyes.

  “You’re all right now, Annie,” Shona says, lifting the old lady’s hand from the arm of the chair and clasping it. “What’s the matter?”

  Annie looks at her fearfully.

  “Help me,” she says.

  I look at Annie. All that is left of her is a heap of bones and a series of almost electrical impulses that make her shout out. Out in the hall, the board that links the call buttons in residents’ room buzz and buzz, lights flashing. That noise. All day that board buzzes until some days it feels like it’s buzzing inside me, that there’s a bee trapped inside my brain. Buzz, buzz.

  Shona glances out, then back at Annie.

  “You’re fine, Annie. You’re safe here.”

  “I want to go home,” says Annie. “Can you take me to my mum’s house?”

  “You’re safe here, pet,” says Shona in that voice that makes me want to shoot her. I watch as she lifts a hand to Annie’s shock of thin white hair and gently pats it down.

  Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

  “Do you know what we’ve got for lunch today?” Shona asks Annie, in a conspiratorial tone.

  Annie looks up at her, almost hopefully, shaking her head.

  “Roast pork!” whispers Shona delightedly. “Apple sauce!

  Pureed kack.

  A ghost of a smile twitches on Annie’s lips and her eyes do not leave Shona’s face.

  “And pudding!” says Shona. “What’s your favourite pudding?”

  “Ice cream,” says Annie.

  “Well,” says Shon
a, “You’re going to be a very happy girl today, aren’t you Annie? There’s ice cream for pudding today!”

  Annie smiles.

  Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. I can see the lights flashing through the open door at regular intervals, like lights on a Christmas tree.

  “All right Annie?” she says. Annie says nothing but slumps further into the cushion as Shona drops her hand and walks to the door.

  “Marie! Can you get the buzzers on the first floor, please?”

  “Sorry, Marianne.” Shona sits back down beside me. “Our wee chat got interrupted, didn’t it?”

  “You were the only one saying anything,” I mutter.

  “Quite right, Marianne. Quite right, pet. It’s your turn now, isn’t it?”

  I look across at Annie whose eyes are drooping, her head falling forward.

  “I was thinking we could have a wee chat about the old days,” says Shona. “It’s always nice talking about the past, isn’t it?”

  “My long term memory is fine, thank you.” I tell her sharply.

  “Of course it is, Marianne. I just thought it would be nice to have a chat. I bet you’ve got lots of interesting stories inside that head of yours.”

  If only she knew. Perhaps I should tell her. That would be interesting.

  “What did you work at, Marianne?”

  A nurse pops her head in the door.

  “Shona, Mr Peters has another bladder infection. I’ve asked Dr Martin to call.”

  “Okay, thanks Marie.”

  “I was a lawyer.”

  “Goodness me, Marianne!” Shona’s almost transparent pupils widen as she turns back to me. “You WERE a clever girl, weren’t you? But then we knew that. Very clever.”

  Shona knew that already. She’s trying to give me affirmation all over again. I don’t know why she thinks I would care about her affirmation. I could buy and sell her.

  “Help! Help! Nurse…”

  Annie begins to call instinctively, before her eyes are even properly open. Then, almost as soon as they are open, they begin to close again.

  “You’re fine, Annie,” Shona calls. We both watch as she drifts back to sleep.

  “And what about your husband, Marianne? What did he do?”

  “Raymond.”

  “Yes Raymond.”

  Raymond. Raymond. I miss you.

  “Marianne? What did Raymond do?”

  “Art teacher.”

  “How interesting!”

  “Oh yes, Raymond was interesting.”

  Annie has begun to dribble as she dozes and I close my eyes to block her and Shona out.

  “Tell me about him.”

  “He was very beautiful.”

  “Handsome,” says Shona gently. “We say handsome for a man, don’t we?”

  “No we do not!”

  Shona flinches slightly.

  “Raymond was beautiful.”

  Shona blinks, trying to smile.

  “Did he take you dancing?”

  I could almost laugh. I seem so old to her that she thinks Raymond and I are of a generation that went waltzing. If she could only see inside my head to Patrice’s: the dusty, seedy, half-lit sprawl of it… The seductive wail of the saxophone shimmering from the tiny stage. The river of red wine and the faint whiff of bitter orange from the open Cointreau bottle, a shimmer of cannabis smoke above the tables, musky and pungent. Jasmine leaning against the pillar in a tight black dress, her lips slashed with vermillion red, a feather boa coiled around her neck like a snake. Jasmine’s femininity as a man had been so suppressed that when she transitioned, she turned the dial up full.

  “We went to clubs, yes.”

  “What did you wear, Marianne?”

  Wear? What did I wear? Why would she ask me such a thing? I ignore her.

  “Do you remember?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “I’m sure you had some lovely frocks.”

  Frocks!

  “Raymond wore black,” I say. “It suited him. Black jeans, black shirt.” He was so slender. “Black hair.”

  “Oh very dramatic,” says Shona. “I wish I could have seen him! I do like a man in black.”

  Perhaps it was the way she said ‘I’, the almost subliminal positioning of herself next to Raymond that angers me so. She is trying to flatter, of course, but she would not belong in the same room as Raymond. Or perhaps it is the way she makes him sound like any man in black.

  “Raymond was not like other men.”

  “He was very special to you, Marianne,” she says soothingly. “I know that. You must miss him terribly. Tell me about his job. His art.”

  “I have told you that my memory does not need to be tested.”

  “We’re just having a chat, aren’t we?” She pats my hand. “It’s very interesting for me. Did Raymond paint at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he paint? Still life? Or landscapes?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Or maybe portraits? Did he ever paint you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh how wonderful! What did it feel like to be the muse of a painter?”

  She looks genuinely intrigued. Nobody would ever paint Shona.

  I do not want to talk about that portrait. Raymond’s painting of me was crueller than a bad photograph. He caught me in a way I could not catch myself in any mirror. We all prepare ourselves when we look in a mirror, make subconscious compensations for what we are about to see there that we do not like. Besides, we always see ourselves from the same head-on angle. But this was me without any time for compensation: I was confronted by my true self.

  When he had finally let me look at it, Raymond watched my face intently, a hopeful smile on his face. But as he witnessed my reaction, the smile disappeared.

  “You don’t like it?” he said, his face tight with disappointment.

  How could I like it? The thin-lipped gash of a mouth dominated my face while the strangely shaped hillocks of my cheeks made me wince. There was nothing feminine about me. It is true he had captured the vivacity of my eyes, but they were small in comparison to my other features. Almost piggy. I knew that Raymond loved me in some way, but when I looked at that painting, I also knew he did not love me physically. He had painted me exactly as I was, without the subtle ameliorations that love would have wrought. This was how he saw me. This was how I was. A plain woman with an oddly shaped face and grey skin.

  “You don’t like it,” Raymond repeated, a little stiffly.

  “It’s wonderful,” I said, which, if one looked only objectively at the painting, was true. But I could not look objectively because I was the subject. He reached out a hand to my face.

  “There are tears in your eyes.”

  “Only because I cannot believe how clever you are, how precisely you have captured me.”

  All these years on, the memory is still painful.

  “Marianne?”

  My eyes swivel to Shona.

  “He was obviously a very interesting man,” she says.

  I do not know what expression Shona catches on my face but whatever it is, it prompts something unexpected in her reaction. I see wariness in her eyes. Fear, almost. It goads me further.

  “Would you like to know HOW interesting?”

  She does not answer.

  “But it is a secret. Can you keep a secret?” I lean forward slightly towards her.

  “Raymond was accused of murder.”

  She does not know how to react. I can see that. She has gone very still. She does not know if I am making it up, or am mistaken, or worse, if it’s true.

  “Oh surely not, Marianne!”

  “Yes!”

  “Murder? Who?”

  Out in the hall, the lights begin to flash again.

  Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

  Shona turns, almost with relief at the sound.

  “We’ll talk again, Marianne. Will we?”

  Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. The noise is so insistent.

  Annie wakes suddenl
y.

  “I want to go home,” she wails. Her voice drops to a whimper. “I want my mum.”

  Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

  It is the doorbell. It will be Charpentier again. Charpentier and his sidekick.

  “If it is a Frenchman,” I call to Shona, “do not tell him I am here.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Zac

  Zac couldn’t reach her. Abbie was curled up on the sofa with a magazine that he knew she wasn’t reading, refusing to meet his eye. He wasn’t sure whether her retreat from him was straight-forward revulsion or a form of punishment. Women’s punishment was so silent. Perhaps he wasn’t wholly feminine after all, he thought, staring at the television screen. The possibility held a glimmer of promise.

  “Do you want some coffee?” he asked.

  “No thanks.” Abbie did not look up.

  In the kitchen he flicked the switch on the kettle and sat down at the table. He was used to a feeling of alienation. But alienation was a quiet feeling inside, a permanent fixture that sat imperviously, like a rock on the beach with the tide moving in and out around it. This was different. The gnawing anxiety, the constant tension, the feeling of impending doom. His stomach churned constantly these days, his insides twisting into spasms like a clenching fist. He didn’t want Abbie to reject him. He didn’t want to be back on the outside.

  But do you love her - he asked himself. To avoid answering the question, he got up and took a mug from the cupboard, busying himself with spoons and jars.

  He did not hear her come into the kitchen. She was simply there when he turned round. She walked towards him, saying nothing, and laid her head on his shoulder. He realised she was crying silently and the guilt rose inside him like a tidal wave. He put his arms round her and the faint smell of vanilla rose from soft, freshly washed hair. Her femininity should make him feel protective, even aroused, but he recognised instead the faint pang of jealousy. He wondered what it felt like to smell that way, what it felt like to have a man hold you in his arms. To be the held instead of the holder.

  Wasn’t this what he wanted? For her not to reject him? Abbie looked up at him.

  “Zac,” she said, fearfully, “what’s going to happen?”

  He gently replaced her head back against his chest.

  “It will be all right,” he said, and he felt the sobs begin to shudder silently through her. Wasn’t that what men were supposed to say?