That her legs were already trickling she did not at first realize what with the tooth the coot the thumping dance the sapphire and the sensation in her lower abdomen.
When it was trickling oozing not actually flooding.
She was wet, however.
Her lovely blessed BLOOD oh God o Lord who she didn’t believe in but would give her closer attention to as soon as she had the time and as far as she was capable.
When she had made herself decent Flora Manhood might have shed a tear or two if she hadn’t felt so angry: kidding herself into a two months pregnancy. A nurse!
A banging on the door. ‘Yes. What is it? Lot?’
‘Mrs Hunter wishes for you, Floradora.’
‘Wishes?’ Shriek shriek. ‘Aren’t you comical!’ It was not all that funny, but Flora Manhood was so free she would have liked to take out her joy on someone, tell them the joke against herself.
While Lotte here might have crawled up out of the depths, hair hanging, that grotty dress in the worst tatters; only the eyes were human.
Their expression was so apprehensive Sister Manhood thought to ask, ‘The star sapphire — did she tell you? The blue one — somebody snitched it!’ In spite of the wound you could see opening in Lottie’s mind, Flora Manhood had to laugh for her own acquittal.
The housekeeper groaned and shifted her spongy feet. ‘I am the one they will accuse. Ach, yoy!’ She hobbled thumping in the direction of the dividing door.
The little bell had begun its tinkling. Years ago for the devil of it Flora Manhood and Snow Tunks had pushed against another, blacker door, padded and studded. They stood beside the basin of urky water just as the bell was rung to signify nothing can become something, if you let yourself believe if you had the power to look far enough deep enough not get the creeps the gooseflesh the giggles craning to see above the heads or around all those red Irish necks.
When here along the passage this same bell, except it had an angrier, more desperate ring.
‘What is it, Mrs Hunter?’ Flora Manhood was bouncing like the rubber ball she felt: tell her about the Baby that Isn’t; have a laugh together; the old thing would soon forget. ‘What can I do for you?’ the nurse asked.
‘I am the one who must do. I want you to help me on to the throne.’
Help, indeed; Sister Manhood was so strong she gathered up the bundle of trussed flannel scratching jewellery baby powder stained brocade and ratty sables in one armful.
She dumped it on the seat. ‘There, dear. Hold tight!’ Seeing the claws still groping for the mahogany rails, ‘Got your balance, have you?’
Mrs Hunter murmured, ‘Yes.’ Balance is always a matter of chance.
Again Sister Manhood thought she could feel the trickling of her joyous blood. ‘Now if you are happy — comfy — there are one or two things I must attend to. I’ll leave the door open so as you can call out if you want me. Or here’s your little bell.’ She fetched a stool and stood it with the bell beside the commode.
It tickled her to think that all but the same tinkle which brought Flora Manhood might summon the Holy Ghost (not that she intended blasphemy: she could perhaps in time sort of believe; what would Col have thought, though?).
Mrs Hunter had no complaints to make. Her nose was brooding: she was so deep in concentration she was glad to hear her nurse go. Nobody could help her now: only herself, and grace.
If she strained periodically on the commode it was as a formality to please her nurses and her doctor. Now the real business in hand was not to withdraw her will, as she had once foreseen, but to will enough strength into her body to put her feet on the ground and walk steadily towards the water. There was the question of how much time she would have before the eye must concentrate on other, greater contingencies, leaving her to chaos. That this was threatening, she could tell from the way the muslin was lifted at the edges, till what had been a benison of sea, sky, and land, was becoming torn by animal passions, those of a deformed octopod with blue-suckered tentacles and a glare of lightning or poached eggs.
Alfred my dearest dearest you are the one to whom I look for help however I failed,
And know that I alone must perform whatever the eye is contemplating for me.
To move the feet by some miraculous dispensation to feel sand benign and soft between the toes the importance of the decision makes the going heavy at first the same wind stirring the balconies of cloud as blows between the ribs it would explain the howling of what must be the soul not for fear that it will blow away in any case it will but in anticipation of its first experience of precious water as it filters in through the cracks the cavities of the body blue pyramidal waves with swans waiting by appointment each a suppressed black explosion the crimson beaks savaging only those born to a different legend to end in legend is what frightens most people more than cold water climbing mercifully towards the overrated but necessary heart a fleshy fist to love and fight with not to survive except as a kindness or gift of a jewel.
The seven swans are perhaps massed after all to destroy a human will once the equal of their own weapons its thwack as crimson painful its wings as violently abrasive don’t oh DON’T my dark birds of light let us rather — enfold.
Till I am no longer filling the void with mock substance: myself is this endlessness.
From the bathroom window Sister Manhood could see the moon had risen: it was full, or almost (the moon is always less than perfect the moment after catching sight of it).
Her breasts gathered on the sill, Flora Manhood was humming very slightly, down her nose, against her teeth. She would have offered her love if it had been asked for — not sensual love: no men, for God’s sake! but in support of some objective, or idea. Unfortunately she was short on ideas, as Col had hinted on and off, except the one she had refused to entertain, and which Col had insisted he would nourish in her. She laughed lazily (not sensually) from between relaxed lips. Shriven by her menstrual blood, she was reconciled, she believed, to what had been a shaky vocation, and was anxious for Mary de Santis to arrive, so that she might impress her, not with crude zeal, but with what St Mary would surely recognize as altered vision.
In a minute she would return to her patient and together they would celebrate this change. She would wipe the old thing’s bottom with a tenderness it had never before experienced, and surely Elizabeth Hunter, with her gift for scenting weakness in others, was not such a cynical bitch that she would laugh in your face and tear your intentions to shreds. She could, though.
Was it the bell? Not the tinkled ascent of silver notes but thin tin crumpling and a tongue abruptly flattened out into silence.
Sister Manhood left the window so quickly the sash shuddered, the panes rattled.
When she reached the bedroom the muslin curtain was waving from its rod as it did whenever a wind rose behind your back. The swollen curtain was filling the room. It could have upset the little bell, now lying on the carpet.
For that matter, it could have upset Mrs Hunter.
The nurse rushed to shut the window. ‘It’s the climate!’ she cried. ‘You don’t stand a chance!’ (Actually Flora Manhood had never given the climate a thought till Princess Dorothy had started drawing everybody’s attention to it; otherwise a climate is what you are born to, and accept because you can’t avoid it.) ‘The draught wasn’t too much for you, was it?’
Mrs Hunter had slipped sideways on her throne while still hooked to the mahogany rails. One buttock, though withered, was made to shine like ivory where the rose brocade was rucked up. The eyes were mooning out through the mask which was the apex of her acolyte’s creative skill.