Chapter 39
It is an honour to be taken into someone’s wounds. Their real wounds, not their emotional gripes. Wounds that cut the body until it is less whole, less human and no amount of healing can make it complete again. To be taken into someone’s wounds is to be trusted to recognise that only their flesh has been ruined. It may be revolting to behold, this wound, but it has not wrecked the rest of them.
I was about to be taken into Tilda’s wound. I was about to witness the ultimate nakedness. I waited outside our bathroom door until I was called. We’d been back in Scintilla four days. It was time to get my first viewing over with. She told me to wait until she showered and gathered her courage. She warned me that her right side was like a breast without a nipple at the moment. This was because swelling remained on her. The idea of that swelling pleased her. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the swelling never went? A nippleless swelling is better than flatness and poky ribs showing.
I tapped on the frosted glass door. ‘Your audience awaits.’ I could see Tilda’s shadow moving about in there, shuffling this way and that. I supposed she was deciding where best to stand.
‘Okay,’ she called. ‘I’m ready. Careful what you say, won’t you?’ A nervous giggle parenthesised the request. She whistled a few tuneless bars. I could have been inspecting a new outfit she’d bought. I finger-brushed my fringe out of the way like I was going on a date. The death-awe returned to me. Death was about to show me its true face, the face of the god of disfigurement. I was determined to look it in the eye and not blink or turn my head or gasp. I may not be a crier when it’s required of me, but, honesty box, this was my finest hour of intimacy.
I turned the knob and eased the door open, making the steam mist swirl out. Tilda had wrapped a towel around herself like a long bra. Her wet hair was furled in a bob and she had brushed blueness onto her eyelids. She smiled with a mouth of purple lipstick, though I could tell it was more scared grimace than smiling. She stood up straight and adjusted her bony shoulders back and forth, unsure of their correct setting for this occasion. Forward made her bust too concave, she said; the other way made it stick out too falsely. ‘Here goes, then.’ She closed her eyes, held her breath and let the towel drop.
It was just as she had described: a breast without a nipple. And yet not exactly a breast. More a bulge of pale pink skin with a thin scar running horizontally through it. Darker pink where the scar stopped in the middle of her chest. Whiter pink where it trailed into her underarm. The effect of the scar and the bulge together was like a pair of large lips pursed and permanently sealed from ever parting. I said as much to Tilda and she looked down and felt across herself. ‘Lips?’
‘Lips.’
‘Yes. I can feel lips all right.’ She remarked how the pain was so slight, the skin so smooth and so firm and so silky. ‘Lips. Come and kiss them. Come and kiss them.’
I thought she was testing me, wanting me to prove I was still attracted to her. Yet there was no mistaking the other meaning in her voice, the groan which was caught in her throat and making her gulp. It was one of her usual pre-congressing mannerisms.
I did not hesitate. I placed my hands on her hips, bent down and kissed. I started at the centre of the scar, kissed along to the right of it, then back along to the left. I kissed into her armpit’s bristle. The taste there was soap and cotton. The scar’s taste was faintly metallic, the kind that blood leaves when a fresh scab is healing.
She turned around to have me kiss while she watched in the mirror. Was she checking if I was doing it under sufferance? I was not doing it under sufferance. There was ecstasy in this wound-kissing. It was the more factor making a comeback.
Chapter 40
In the city you are anonymous. You can walk down the street and no one says hello. Country life is a different proposition. You can’t turn a corner and not be recognised, greeted, watched. Which is fine if you want to live in public. But what if you want to avoid people’s eyes?
Tilda wanted to avoid them after the cakes and casseroles began arriving. There they were at the back door with well-wishing messages:
Our thoughts are with you, Tilda. From the Croft family (your neighbours over the rear fence). Hope you have a speedy return to good health.
Thinking of you at this time—Pamela from the bakery. P.S. These Neenish tarts were made with my hand. They are not bought ones.
Hector and Filipa Vigourman left a tin-foil parcel of quiche. We have both had family members touched by your illness. We know what you are going through. The Lord only gives burdens to those who can bear them.
How did anyone know? ‘Have they been spying?’ Tilda railed. ‘Has this town had its eyes pushed to our keyholes?’ How could she walk down the street now? They’ll be looking at her for defects. She always liked getting looks from men. She guaranteed being titless would disqualify her from being perved at.
I confessed it was me who let the word out. On the day I rushed to Melbourne to be with her I couldn’t disappear without telling the Gazette; it would make me look unreliable. I took Gail at the office into my confidence. I asked her to pass on my apologies to Hector Vigourman: I couldn’t write more articles for a while. I did mention cancer as the reason but I didn’t say Tilda and I didn’t say breast. I said biopsy and woman’s problems and I suppose Gail guessed the rest. In confidence must mean spread the word in Scintilla.
Tilda called me stupid and naïve. ‘You really are just a boy, aren’t you? You had no right to say a thing.’
I apologised with over a dozen sorrys, but sorrys become like tears and smiling: you just do them to have the argument over with.
I did have an inspiration, though. What’s the best way to deal with a rumour? Put out a counter-rumour. Get tongues wagging in the way you want, I said. Don’t shut the door on the town, don’t hide yourself away—it only feeds gossip. Step out, be bold and stroll down the street like you’re Princess Di, chest out, not hunched up, big grin on your face. Tuck a soft sock or one of my old singlets down your blouse for a substitute mound; it should do until your scar is ready to have a proper prosthetic rub against it.
‘Yes’, Tilda said. ‘A counter-rumour. What a brilliant idea!’ But forget socks and singlets. She’s a good carver, not just a drawer and painter of things. If she had some rubber sponge it would be an ideal material—the thick green sponge they use for fragile packing.
I fetched a dozen bricks of the stuff from Hobbs’ Timber, Tacks and Twine, and Tilda sat down to carve with a Stanley knife and scissors. Three breast moulds as trials until she got the dimensions accurate. The finished article matched up perfectly in the mirror, tucked in her bra. ‘Can you tell the difference?’
‘No. It’s like you have two normal breasts.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
‘Both exactly matching?’
‘Yes.’
And so we stepped out together, promenading like we hadn’t a care in the world. Tilda had tanned herself with a makeup mixture to cover her pallor—her own invention of facial powder and ochres from her studio palette. Turps, ochre, cinnamon, face powder and tea. She looked Indian if you didn’t get close up to spot the fakeness. Her teeth flashed Indian white as we saluted good mornings to cars and pedestrians, shopkeepers through their windows. I wouldn’t have blamed people if they thought us strange; I expect we overdid acting happy. We stopped people we’d never even met and remarked how the sun had a fair kick in it today but we certainly could do with rain.