Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

     It wasn’t a place to have a tummy bug in, or cystitis, or a period.

     But that was all right because I didn’t have any of those.

     There wasn’t a loo, you see. Or a tap.

     But I kept it nice. As I wanted it.

     Four walls. It was all you needed. Six if you count the floor and roof. Four square. Fair and square.

     Like the bags. Tesco and Gateway. All folded nice. Not like the way PIG just shoved them into that gap by the washing machine, all anyhow. Boots. Sainsbury. And some were special, foreign ones, or from posh shops. You needed to find the corners or the folded bit at the bottom, then push the air out, bit by bit. You couldn’t rush it, or the bag would puff up again. You wouldn’t know they’d been used by the time I’d finished. Flat. Like a rabbit on the road, and you don’t want to look but you know you have to anyway. Flat. Like Anthony.

When it gets hot it smells of tar and fish.

If I want to go I can hang on, and hold tight, clenched, and that feels good, because I know I can. I can hang on for ever if I have to. Not like PIG. She drinks tea all the time, with sugar, and has to keep going to the loo. At night when she and Dad come in from the pub I hear her peeing and it goes on for ever. And I think of it yellow and steaming and I feel sick.

     And then I am sick. And that’s good too.

     She comes, all warm worry, with bare bristly legs and pink nylon.

     ‘Pat … Pat,’ she’d say and Dad would call from the bedroom: ‘She doesn’t like to be called that.’ But I did. I liked her calling me Pat. It was all to do with the wire. Every time she called me that she helped me back up, onto the wire, as if she’d held my hand to get my balance. Up, high and tight and clenched.

     And I’d call her PIG instead of Peg, and pretend it was a mistake, just the way my mouth had gone at the time.

     The other was worse.

     The loo-seat was all warm and the bathroom smelt of stale deodorant and the other.

     ‘Please,’ I said, at breakfast, my voice high and strung
from the wire. ‘Please, would you mind opening the bathroom window after you’ve shat?’

     My Dad’s eyes and mouth and nostrils were adrift in his face.

     ‘Patricia…’ he said, panicked.

     ‘It’s the past tense of the verb to -’

     ‘I know,’ said quick, before I could get the word in.

     ‘It’s to do with eating meat,’ I say, superior. ‘The difference between dogs and horses.’ Pleasant, so pleasant.

     And I went to school. At least they thought I had.

     Instead.

     I can hear the sea all the time.

     When I have everything as I want it, the bags in line, and the yoghurt tub by the sleeping bag, I take the cliff path, high above the beach and the buddleia arching with Red Admirals. If I disturb them, the wire trembles and each tremble has to be paid for. Time is my currency. One butterfly is a minute. But I have time enough for them all to fly. I can hang on.

     They assume I’m on holiday, the lady in the kiosk and the newspaper man. ‘Weather good enough for you, son?’ across the gritty prom.

     The old amusement arcade has been converted to conveniences. Karen fucks Chris’ in red, and a tale of woe and betrayal in black that goes on and on, all the way down to the drain. The loo part is partitioned off with cheap plasterboard, ready for the next lot of felt tips, and to get to it you have to pass the mirrors. There’s a battered old sign - ‘The Hall of Mirrors’ - and a seaside postcard of a fat woman, shocked by her reflection. Like PIG.

     I stop and look. Just by breathing I slide one bulge up and down, or from side to side.

     Dad said I was too thin. Too thin. ‘Peg’s concerned about you, Patricia. You should eat more.’

     But I look in the mirrors and I know.

     ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll cook a dinner for us, a special one. You see, I’ll eat everything.’

     He gave me the money and I wove a menu.

     Prawns, like babies’ legs, pushing through blankets of mayonnaise in avocado prams.

     ‘Oh my gosh,’ she said. ‘This is wonderful. Isn’t it wonderful, Robert? Isn’t she clever, your daughter?’

     But I look in the mirrors. I move and the fat swings up to my stomach.

     Lamb protesting against the blade, butter folding and giving in over broccoli heads, roast potatoes sliding and crashing on greased skin.

     If I tilt my head I have a double chin.

     Chocolate mousse makes tiny squeals as the spoon tears down the texture.

     I crouch a little and my thighs burst, and whipped cream sighs off the ladle. I go up close and see details: pores, hairs, spots.

     Fat and ugly. Fatter and uglier than anyone I’ve ever seen.

     Fatter and uglier even than PIG.

     They didn’t notice, so busy, exclaiming over the time and the trouble, and relieved that they were wrong. Those smiles - ‘See? It’s all right after all. She’s not … the word unthought. Then the hand, gross, sweating, hovering: ‘I shouldn’t, you know, I really shouldn’t … - she’s right, she shouldn’t - but the second helping slops onto her plate anyway.

     They didn’t notice. It was easy to pretend, to push it around, make a mess, islands and rivers, like a chill. And talk and talk, and laugh and join in.

They can’t see where I am.
They can’t see the wire.
And me.
High.

     People have gone into the bushes behind the hut, caught short on the cliff path. You can tell from the flies and the smell. It’s the kind of thing PIG’d do. shriek: ‘Dying for a pee!’ and crash through the leaves.

     I couldn’t do that, so I hang on, and go to the loo past the mirrors.

     There’s not much anyway. It’s dark and it stings.

     And I haven’t done the other for days. I see it, far down inside me, hard, black. If I concentrate I can make it disappear. Flattened, like a raisin on the kitchen floor. Gone.

     Flattened.

     They were going to call him Anthony, if he’d lived, my Dad told me.

     Flat, Gran said. Quite flat. You wouldn’t believe it, she said.

     It was years before they told me about him, my twin. Only I’d known, all along, at least something. Like when you see things, shadowy things at the edge, and when you look they’re gone. Flattened by too much looking.

     Anthony.

     I can’t really get them flat, the bags, not like new. Once they’ve been used they’re never the same. But one day.

Perhaps.

     ‘How can she go on like that?’ I heard PIG say late one night. ‘Without eating? Doesn’t she get hungry?’

     But I do. you see. I do. That’s what makes it so pure and strong and good. I feel hunger all the time. Or something. Something that turns and tears inside me. Only I can handle it. that’s the difference. I can hold on. That’s the important bit. Holding on.

     When I’ve finished in the loo, slowly and carefully I wash my hands, my face, and then I make a bowl with my fingers and let it half fill with water. Then I suck, drop by drop. And I can take each miracle on my tongue and I know it. And it is enough.

     When I come out onto the prom the wire is ready for me, taut and drawn. Everything is clear and sharp. Each grain of sand on the beach glitters, every wave is alone and proud.

     Sometimes at night I hear them come, voices along the path, and I know if I push hard and straight in my sleeping bag, strung. I can make them go past and they do. The sea sounds mopping their voices.

     I didn’t bring much, just the sleeping bag. You don’t need much, not if you live like me, on the wire. I brought the scissors to keep my hair short, but it doesn’t grow much now, and I can’t remember when I last cut my nails. It makes life easy. you see. Easy.

     It drove my Mum mad, having that flat thing inside her, that was what Gran said. We go and see Mum at Christmas. But there’s not much point, she doesn’t know me. Or Dad. Funny thing, though, she likes PIG. You can see her eyes kind of grab.

     Gran never did like Mum. Unhinged, that was the word she used, and I’d picture her, a door flapping away down the road like a bin liner.

     I think that’s why I hate tinsel, seeing it there on the bars of her bed. If they ever put tinsel on the bars of my bed I’ll know what they expect of me.

     This isn’t a place to have a tummy bug in, or cystitis, or a period.

     There is a loo, and a tap and a basin. But the drains have been blocked so the nurses can weigh and measure everything that comes out of me.

     They cut the wire and the crack of it and the coiling go on for ever in my head, the ends lashing and tearing.

     Without the wire there isn’t anything else you see.

     The Red Admirals dance without me, and I can’t hear the sea any more.

They’ve taken my bags away.
The doctor asked which was my favourite one.
He didn’t understand.
He talked about a contract.
PIG cried when she saw me.
Soon, I expect, they’ll come with the tinsel.

     If you squeeze the creases in the sheets slowly and carefully with your fingers you can make them flat.

     Soon I shall have made all the sheets quite flat.

     As if I’d never been here.