Lowered Lashes continued
"I was younger than I am now." She waited for the courtesy of an answering undergrunt, but received none. She was on her own now. "I dressed like a man, because I feared men so much..." Coughing interrupted and the loosened phlegm was relaxing. "I always dressed as a man. I don't know why. Anyway, he often met me in the lift at work, every morning. With a greasy smile. He was one of those office wolves who had a medallion nesting in a shadowy chest, his heavy breath whistling between the teeth as he leant over me to show how to add up the columns. He'd double-guessed my sex or, perhaps, he knew from the dusty records they kept in Personnel. Whatever the case, he discovered breasts beneath the sports jacket after he had sent the other girl in the office to get drinks - dispenser number 35 regular coffee, 24 strong, 17 whipped - you can see I remember it all well. The other girl came back, with the steaming plastic cups inserted into the holes in the tray. Smiling all the way back to the invoices."
The silence was painful. Listening was the other side of Hell.
The details are pin-pricks," she resumed, "Details that are never to be forgotten. It was as if the other girl in the office simply knew I had been manhandled and condoned it. I wondered if she had once had his wet blubbery lips upon her own. How do you do, Mr Tongue? Quite well, thank you, Miss Tongue. She looked the sort. Not exactly tarty, but with come-on eyes. The man made me want to cry. I tried to make my eyes speak to her on my behalf. But she wouldn't look at them."
She heard me fidgeting from the other side of the confessional. Then my quaint female fart.
"One day," she continued again, "the other girl was gone. Absent on leave of maternity, they told me. But it didn't make sense. She would have continuity of pensionable service, if she came back to work after the confinement. Why would having babies make you more of a woman than you were before? I had a baby of my own, you know. It was his, I suppose. He did it from behind, arching under with his device bent up in the middle like a winkle-pin."
Later, after returning from the church, she stared at the wheeling tea. She would never drink it. Merely relish it in anticipation. She spat into the chamberpot beside her bed, as if she'd coughed up semen. Confession always did that to her. Her friends had all died out - except, of course, the one with the pretty flowers in her hair and the personal stereo clamped to the ears, who came to visit. It was me now disguised as someone's daughter. Didn't seem to matter whose. I told her of my home life - when, from the large scullery-kitchen, the echoes of chanting prayer had reverberated through the darkly lit halls, landing to landing, until they reached the shuttered attic bedroom. Father's intoning voice punctuated the household's vesperal responses. The roof grunted. History re-wound across Old Europe. The personal stereo which I had as a birthday present was a neat black box with insect-like appendages. The kind uncle who had donated this item had also included a pre-recorded cassette to try out on the revolving spindles. So the manufacturers could break the music at a convenient point, it was necessary to spool back to the tape's end accordingly when commencing a new side. The music was monkish plain chant, echoing as if the head itself was a cathedral. I hated hard-core rock. The stereo effect was so sophisticated, I imagined there was somebody behind me, grunting. It was just one of the monks out of tune. A leper in the woodpile - an expression my shadow-haired uncle had once used when stroking my neck. Apparently, an ancient saying. A bad apple in the barrel. There's always one such in every group. All families had at least one. Sometimes, I thought I was the only decent apple in the whole barrel. Rosy-rubbed. That birthday night, I dreamed of owning a personal video set. There would be eye- as well as ear-phones. Walking the streets with a white stick, while watching the latest horror splatter movies...
Afternoon tea was a tradition, like evening prayers when the servants gathered with the whole family to hear Father intone from the big black book with gold clasps. I knew about the ancient history of generations. I read most of it on the fly-leaves of ancient volumes that had been collected over the years. The other children were members of the same blood-line. I wasn't. It mattered little, since these modern days nobody bothered to care. Only my uncle - the one who had seen fit to heed progress with the personal stereo - had the wherewithal of knowledge. The present was, I believed, my consolation prize for being a mongrel. "The wooden spoon in the race for ethnic cleansing", as one politician once clumsily put it on television, whilst referring to something quite different, beyond the context. My pedigree was beauty. The other members of the family were ugly as sin. The cousins wore masks on their faces, as ordinary folk wear shoes on their feet - to avoid further weathering. Tough as old boots. Leather tongues instead of ears. Boy and girl tongues meeting in dark chimney-corners. Eyes sunk below the Plimsoll Line. I was my uncle's favourite because the abnormality of my conceiving had produced intrinsic normality, the swings and roundabouts of cross-breeding: a roulette-wheel coming to eternal rest with several ball-bearings (instead of just one) lodging in the lucky numbers. The plates were brought in. Manicured cucumber sandwiches. Steaming samovars of oriental infusions. Tiers of drooling cakes, each in turn an aunt's favourite. Father would have been pleased to see the tradition continued.
