Girl in the Dark (6 page)

I am sitting up in bed in a strange room. The walls are covered in intensely floral wallpaper—a pattern of pink roses crowding together on a cream background. My bed is a single, and I look down its length to a window, through which there is a misty Scottish landscape—a small angle of garden fringed with orange montbretia, and penned in by rough stone walls—and beyond it, grey and purple moorland muted by white haze.

The room smells of old furniture, musty bedding, soft rain, worn carpet, well-thumbed detective novels
and dust. It is the smell of a place not in permanent occupation, but with all that is needed for temporary happiness. I realise I am in a bedroom from my childhood, in the cottage we rented for family holidays, year after year.

In the bed I am propped up on pillows and I am holding something that weighs heavily on my arms.

I look down, and see that it is a baby, and I know that it is mine, and that I have recently given birth. The baby has pale skin and large brown eyes, like my own. It also has a head of the most astonishing red hair, pure unvariegated flame. I am surprised, and wonder where the hair has come from. But then I remember photographs of Pete’s brother David when he was young, with hair that was the same glowing, traffic-light red.

Not so implausible then, I think, this baby. And as I wake, and it dissolves, I remember the time when it was not implausible in real life, the time after the first disaster but before the second, the run of months that promised so much, a period of adjustment, and of hope.

The woman looks at me nervously as I sit down on the opposite seat. She places her arm protectively around the small child at her side. “It’s OK,” I say, in a friendly way, “I’m not infectious. I’ve just got a light sensitivity condition, that’s all.”

It is October, and I am on the train to London for my appointment with a dermatologist, at last. I am
wearing a dark red coat, an oversized cap with a big peak in a burgundy woollen fabric and a mask I have made myself. I cut it from a dark red satin scarf, using a double layer for improved light protection, hemming it neatly, and attaching a piece of elastic each side to hook over my ears. It covers my nose, mouth and cheeks. However, it does become damp and stuffy under the satin, and my spectacles steam up. Periodically, I pull the mask down for a while, in order to cool off. The whole ensemble co-ordinates well.

The woman opposite ignores my friendly remarks. After staring at me suspiciously, she looks out of the window for five minutes as the train trundles through undistinguished suburbs under a flat grey sky. Then, casually, as if the thought had only just occurred to her, she picks up her child and walks to the other end of the carriage.

I shake my head and smile behind my mask. I am becoming used to strange reactions to my garb, which I now must wear every time I go outdoors, unless I wait till dusk. It does not help, of course, that this is October 2005, three months after the 7/7 bombings, and everyone is on high alert for suspicious characters on the transport system. My close friend Jonathan was in the underground carriage next to the bomb at Aldgate—he escaped with only a badly jarred spine, but he can no longer handle his commute into town. “I saw things that no one should ever see,” is all he says on the subject, but in the night, he screams.

We are falling out of the labour market together, in a graceful backward arc, he with a diagnosis of post-traumatic
stress disorder, I with my mysterious skin. We compare notes by phone on the HR departments of our employers as, slowly and inexorably, long-term sickness absence moves towards careful, procedurally correct dismissals.

Since July, I have been living in Itchingford with Pete. I have been eating healthily, and taking exercise. I have been going for runs through the estate in the summer evenings, smelling the twilight fragrances and coming continually upon cats, sitting enigmatically on gateposts, draped along kerbstones or shooting silently across my path. Investigating Pete’s bookshelves, I have been reading novels I didn’t know before—
Darkness at Noon
by Arthur Koestler, Joseph Heller’s
Catch-22
and the thrillers of Adam Hall. I have cleaned the house, and done our collective washing, and experimented with recipes from cookery books I’ve had for years but never used.

And I have begun to wonder if, perhaps, the loss of everything I thought defined me—my career, my independence, the freedom to go where I want in the world—is not in fact the loss of self I feared. I have been finding parts of me squashed and crumpled, like favourite clothes that have fallen down the back of a chest of drawers and been forgotten, and now I have the chance to smooth them out and hold them to the light.

I know I do not have much courage. If this had not happened, despite wondering, periodically, about life beyond the civil service, I would have stayed on that escalator until the end, never quite having the guts to climb over the side. Now, with this brutal shove, I’m
being given the chance to see a different me develop, while perhaps, somewhere in another part of the multi-verse, a dedicated policy expert keeps trudging into the office, growing hoary and experienced in the subtleties of power.

I had been obsessed with my flat, with the need to make my space and live in it on my own. But over the summer just gone, I have discovered that living with Pete has been … well, fun. The realisation came to me quite suddenly, one lunchtime, as I looked across the table and found the space before my eyes filled with his form, and something lifted up inside me, like a secret inner smile.

I am thinking over this strange heightened summer as the train pulls into Clapham Junction. As I move through the crowd on the platform, a young woman looks at my mask and mutters behind her hand to her friend: “Just like Michael Jackson!” I smile again under the clammy material. “Well, I never knew that,” I say to myself. “So—I have a celebrity accessory. Was it too much plastic surgery in his case, I wonder, or was he just worried about germs?”

The appointment itself is an anticlimax. The dermatologist listens to my story and examines my face under her special magnifying lamp. “I do not like the look of this,” she says. “But this is not my area of expertise. I am going to refer you to a specialist photobiology unit.”

It takes another few weeks. And when I first go there, it is simply for various biochemical tests. I provide samples of blood, urine and stools, wrapped immediately in silver foil to limit light exposure (they will be
checking for porphyria, among other conditions, and the relevant chemicals decay quickly on contact with light). They tell me that I will be sent an appointment for light testing, some time in the spring.

Pete has the first full week of November off work, because it is Tree Week—the period when autumn colour is at its most splendid, and therefore most worthy of a photographer’s time and attention.

Of course, Tree Week can vary depending on climatic conditions—if it has been blowing a gale, most of the leaves can be gone. Or, if the weather has been mild, a number of trees may not have fully turned. But employers do not grant photographers spontaneous tree leave—everything has to be booked in advance. The first full week of November proves to be right more often than not.

“How did you get on at Winkworth Arboretum?” I ask, when Pete returns one afternoon, humping tripod and camera gear in from the car.

“It was great,” he enthuses. “There weren’t many people about, so I was able to get out my central column.”

I laugh in a coarse and lewd manner.

“Really,” he says severely. “The young ladies of today. That was a perfectly legitimate photographic remark.”

As all serious photographers will know, the central
column is the extra pole in the middle of a tripod which can be extended upwards, above the legs, to gain additional height. The language of photography is rich in such stimulating metaphors. It is not uncommon to talk about “taking a second body,” or “keeping my old legs but getting a new head.” Shooting in large format requires a rising front, whilst those who use digital boast about the spectacular size of their sensors.

“My plan is to go to the New Forest on Friday,” says Pete. “Would you like to come with me, if your face is feeling up to it?”

I eagerly accept. I’ve never been to the New Forest, apart from once to a wildlife park for the purpose of seeing wild boar, for which I have always had a soft spot, after reading all the Asterix books when young. The boar stalked about in a stately way, thrusting their long snouts into the churned-up ground. The interpretative board on the fence of their large wooded enclosure praised their high intelligence and low cunning, their ability to run fast, swim rivers and elude pursuit. Since ancient times, it went on, hunting them was considered an extremely hazardous and therefore highly prestigious activity. I was pleased to find myself a fan of such a superior creature.

On Friday morning, however, we are on the hunt for other things. We bound down the A339 as it dips and surges between two smooth walls of trunks.

“Look out for a turning on the right with a sign for Bolderwood,” says Pete.

“There, there!” I shout.

We swerve off on to a single-track road that tunnels
into the trees. Inside the car, the light goes dim. The sounds of traffic on the main road die away, and soon all we can hear is the scrunch of our own tyres and the engine’s purr, loud in the leafy silence. It is as though we are being absorbed into an enormous living organism; if I were to look back and see the forest close in, amoeba-like, behind us, I would not be surprised.

Time stretches. For what seems hours, but must only be minutes, there is nothing but our gentle forward motion under the upraised arms of the trees.

Finally we stop in a small gravelled parking bay to the side of the road. I get out and look up to a sudden slice of brilliant white sky. The air prickles as I inhale, like sparkling water. Pete opens the boot and extracts his gear. “I’m glad I bought this lightweight tripod,” he says. “It’s much easier to lug about.”

I sing him a chorus from Handel’s
Messiah,
with photographic words: “His yoke is easy and his tripod is light.”

We cross the empty single-track road and set off down a sandy track whiskered with bright green grass. Across it is a low wooden bar, about knee height, to prevent the entry of motor vehicles. “Shall I leap?” I say to Pete. “I haven’t done anything like this since we did high jump at primary school, with poles and bamboo canes.”

“Well, it’s up to you,” he says, “but try not to go flat on your face at the outset. That would be unfortunate.”

“I’ll be prudent,” I say, stepping over the bar.

The path snakes along as though at the bottom of a canyon, a pale sandy stripe mirroring a pale strip of
sky. The trees are huge and intensely individual—fat, gnarled, tan-leaved oaks, smooth columnar beeches with their peachy, biscuity foliage, golden birches and sweet chestnuts, the occasional sober-suited conifer, refusing to be drawn in. Leaves crunch under our feet; now and again there is a rustling off to the side as some creature passes on its way.

“Now here’s a fine tree,” Pete says, as we come to a large beech set slightly back from the path, which thrusts one of its muscular grey limbs out sideways, exactly parallel to the ground. The limb runs straight for a couple of metres before curving upwards, creating a perfect seat.

I plunge through ankle-deep leaves and settle myself on the accommodating arm. “This is great,” I say happily. “Just the right height.” It’s shady on the branch, under the multi-layered canopy. I unhook my mask and stuff it in the pocket of my coat. Pete sets up his camera on its tripod, then comes towards me and takes my hand.

“You know I love you ever so much, don’t you?”

My heart drops through my body, as though a hangman had kicked away its stool. Oh God, I think, why do men do this? Why do they organise a nice day out, take you to a beautiful place, tell you that they love you—then explain that for various subtle and complicated reasons, you also have to break up.

I take a last breath of sparkling air, and brace myself against the tree.

“Will you marry me?” he says.

For a few moments I am completely stunned. I stare
at him, round-eyed. Then a cascade of mad mixed-up thoughts bursts through my head, whirling in wild eddies, throwing off question marks like fine spray. I don’t know what to say. “Are you sure?” are the words that come to the front of my mind. For we have reached this point by such a bizarre and unpropitious route, there must be a million reasons why it cannot be a good idea. Yet maybe this is part of the true pattern of life—one of the unlooked-for consequences that arise from its ferocious twists and turns, a strange new compound formed inexplicably inside its crucible of pain.

In my mind, planets collide, civilisations evolve and decay. Like petals of a giant flower, possible worlds unfold. In reality, only seconds pass. I still do not know what to say; in the end my mouth speaks for me; it says:

“Yes.”

“I suppose I could retrain as a plumber,” I say doubtfully.

“I’m not sure that would be a good idea,” says Pete. “You’d need to be able to lift a bath.”

We are sitting at the table, replete with Sunday lunch, considering what kind of work I might be able to do, and attempting to think outside the box. The challenge is to find something that does not take place in modern office environments, does not involve spending too long out of doors, and does not require extended periods under fluorescent lights.

“It’s got to be some sort of personal service,” I say, “where I control the surroundings and people come to see me.”

“Psychotherapy or counselling,” suggests Pete.

“I wouldn’t be any good at that at all,” I reply firmly. “Absolutely not. What about reflexology or kinesiology or some sort of complementary health thing?”

It is Pete’s turn to look sceptical.

“Prostitute!” I say. “One of the discreet, suburban kind.”