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It took Mrs Dorey several months to complete the baby, almost as long as if she had had to wait for it to grow naturally in her belly. The decision had not been the result of some logical progression of thought for a woman of her antipathy -  she was a joyless soul. Hers was a cold heart. She had a mean way of looking at the trials of others, this humourlessness which began as some distinctive predisposition in childhood had become entire with age and routine.  A heightened sensitiveness to pain, self-restraint, repression, these were the things which defined her now.  Her dresses were always cut in straight lines revealing nothing. Her heels were similar in their austerity, always square and of a maximum height of two inches. She had never complained. That was the only virtue she had retained of the girl who used to pick her way barefoot across rocky beaches looking for crabs to boil up alive for tea.  

It began one morning back in October. It had still been dark when she locked her front door ready to go to Mother’s. She turned out of her road and saw that familiar row of houses looking like sagging skin on a face. An old body hunched, exhausted, woken too soon, inadequately prepared for the cold in a threadbare cardigan of fog and dew.  A cat, suspicious, glaring, so easily startled, scurried from one garden hedgerow to the next. Letting herself in with the key attached to a string on the other side of the letterbox, she went straight through to the kitchen. The blind hadn’t been pulled down, and the glare of the street lights gave a fluorescent glow to her usually pale skin. She imagined a Geiger Counter being run up and down her body with its beeps and loud mechanical clicks squealing up the scale to the highest possible pitch till the counter broke and the radiation reading turned to ‘Error’. She put the kettle on but instead of setting out the cups with the tea bags and the milk she listened to the surge of electricity running through the appliance, the rumble of bubbles was so charged with pressure and heat that the rest of the world lost its noise.

She looked up at the clock and waited for the big hand to move, she didn’t see it happen but it did, a full five minutes or so. At the bottom of the clock, a crack appeared to be creeping down vertically ever so slowly towards the edge of the kitchen table. Mrs Dorey was so transfixed that she hadn’t heard her Mother shuffling up the hall.

‘What have I said about putting lights on?’

Mother snapped the switch off to further accentuate her point.

Mrs Dorey clicked it on again. Refusing to let herself become annoyed.

‘I’m making tea.’

‘I don’t want tea.’

Mrs Dorey reached into the top cupboard behind the tinned Ravioli and Carrots, she took out the bottle and set it down in front of Mother.

‘Want some? Want a little drink?’ Mother asks.

‘No thank you’

 Mother brandished the nearly empty, sticky bottle under Mrs Dorey’s nose as if it were an indulgent cake, bursting with fresh cream and smelling of strawberries. 

‘Have a drink with me.’

‘No!’  

Think you’re better than me, don’t yer?

‘I see you left the dinner I made for you again . . .’ Mrs Dorey retrieved the plate in a single move. It took her longer to scrape the cold, congealed food from it into the bin. ‘When was the last time you ate, properly?’ She put some bread in the toaster, just a piece, that was all that was left. The crust broke away at the corner of the slice. The toast popped, she scraped the butter as if she were combing out gum from hair. ‘Here! Eat!’

Mother took the brittle toast from the cold plate, realising she was hungry after all.

‘Just some old woman to you, ain’t I? An annoyance.  Remember, I used to make you toast like this? When you were ill?’

‘I don’t remember, no.’

Mrs Dorey’s eye went back to the clock. The crack crept across the table now, she followed it as it went in and out of Mother’s splayed fingers. It crept down and around the table leg, then cut through the linoleum making a neat shape around Mother’s legs. Mrs Dorey considered that Mother’s house might be floating above the town, above treetops and clouds, little houses, little cars - none of it real now, just toys. She wondered if her world and Mother’s would split in two. The linoleum, the concrete and the wooden joists would break away like a piece of biscuit and Mother would still be sitting on the chair drifting away, fading from view, astonishing the gulls and drinking in cloud vapours. Falling, yes falling – not to her death, but into insignificance. While, as all this was happening, Mrs Dorey would be suspended on the other side of the crack, left alone in her half of the floating room, clinging to the taps of the kitchen sink. Would she be sorry? Would she mourn the loss of Mother?

They transferred to the living room. The daughter loosely shook the mother from around her waist and into her father’s firm armchair. The smell of Mother’s sweat and breath was always hanging in the air between them.

‘I think I should open a window.’

‘Leave it!’

‘Is that what you want, Mother? You want me to leave it? Is that really what you want?’ Mrs Dorey’s heart was pounding now, she felt out of breath. For the first time in as long as she could remember she had pushed back, not simply accepted. Anything could happen now.

‘Don’t want nothing from you, girl! You saying I stink? You’re rubbish, scum!

This was the same transcript on repeat, introduced at the right stage of inebriation. It was not the first time she had heard her mother say such things. She looked down at her feet, as a crack spread out across the floor when she leaned her weight into her toes. She stepped over it and made her way back into the kitchen to get a glass of water. Turning on the stiff tap past its biting point, the water squirted out so violently the spray jumped back up and spattered her dress with cold wet. Mrs Dorey dashed the glass into the bottom of the sink out of revenge.  The glass broke and cut her finger, leaving a tiny piece stuck in there. She knew of course that her finger hurt, that the sharp incision in her skin was stinging. Her pain sensors were burning with activity at this new emergency for her body to deal with. Mrs Dorey studied the nugget of glass, noting the direction, the trickle of blood as it coursed out of the miniature diamond cut. Now she imagined herself chugging around the glass nugget in a dingy with a sputtering motor. An iceberg in a vast ocean, a cold and perfect, tight-mirror, sea. Pushing down hard on the glass, she twisted it a little, this way and that, she savoured it. This felt good, a flutter deep in her gut, this felt like life; action, reaction, consequence, punishment – not mere existence; passivity, observation, distance, silence. Mrs Dorey took her time removing the glass, twisting it some more, this way and that. She took her time sealing up this new chink in her armour, her secret exposure to the light. Mrs Dorey applied the plaster slowly, working out each wrinkle from one end to the other, flexing her finger when she was done so that she could enjoy the sticky tightness of it, resisting against the movement of her skin.

Mrs Dorey went back into the living room, scenes on the television, large numbers of people in inadequate boats, a young boy in tears being carried ashore in the arms of a local fisherman.

‘Fuck ’em!’ Says Mother, her drink all but spilling into her lap. ‘Comin’ over here . . . ‘

‘I’ll see you later.’

‘Girl! Let me say summit.

‘I have to go.’

‘You wait! Your Dad, he wasn’t yer real father. I should have said I should have said, should have, should have said should have . . .’

This wasn’t part of the usual script. Mrs Dorey clenched her fists, she felt her heartbeat in her chest, her mouth went dry.

‘You weren’t even ’is . . . how’s that for a laugh. Never told ‘im though, never told him . . . even after ‘e left, even when ‘e left me.’

Crying now, Mother took another swig of the glass. The liquid made an awkward plop as she pulled the glass away from her mouth. The shreds of their connection, what remained of it in Mrs Dorey’s heart, had all but dried up. Yet, somehow the yearning remained. She felt it, she reacted to keep it alive.

‘Mother . . . You need more bread. You’ll need to take care of yourself more. I won’t have the time I once did.’

The solution came to Mrs Dorey as suddenly as a sinkhole that appears in the road you have lived in for twenty years. One moment all is solid and safe, and in the next, everything is in danger, the world starts falling in on itself. The hole gets bigger, the cracks take out more roads, more trees, lives and with it, the urge for survival and time would flow in a different pattern to what it had done before and the exchanged old-for-new faces would seem both ghostly familiar and strange at once.

Outside her front door again, Mrs Dorey struggled to get the key to meet the lock. Her fingers trembled, the stones rumbled under her feet as if this house too would break its ties and float up into the sky.  Her husband was home from work, she could smell residue from another woman weeping from his pores, and clinging to his hair. She had been worried that he might see some sign of her distress in her narrow eyes and tight mouth but she needn’t have.  With the usual exchange of pleasantries, the motions between them were duly observed, they didn’t know how to be anything other than civil.  It was the most admirable characteristic of their marriage and their sound, practical arrangement had fared better than some. Their physical relationship had always been clumsy, passionless, they were just two people who didn’t fit, simply scratching an itch every so often. She wondered, if after the brief, silent, rather humiliating encounters up against the chest of drawers or kitchen counters he had felt used, tolerated, endured, she at least, had been wanted.   In fairness, her husband had found her pretty in the beginning, especially in her white dress with the roses on. He had said she always looked new to him in that dress like they hadn’t even met each other yet and might get to love each other one day. It was the stuff of fantasy, sheer romance, she didn’t blame him for it, but still, she felt the whole thing to be a farce. Let him have his affairs or love every single woman he comes across. It was of little real consequence to her. One day when the time eventually came for her husband to finally admit that he was leaving her for good, they would shake each other’s hand, be civil to the last, and that would be it. She hoped he could learn to be happy despite her, but then happiness is a flimsy, slippery concept, perhaps she had broken his heart, perhaps she had been happy herself until she woke up.

Mrs Dorey dug a hole in the bottom of the garden, a ‘cradle’ she called it, under her breath. She lined it with cloth, strips of cotton, calico, anything. Her instinct was to fill the hole, disguise the cold earth underneath. Sometimes the previous day’s progress would be destroyed by foxes, other mornings she woke up and felt the hole just wasn’t deep enough, sometimes she would stare at the black moon-shaped rinds of soil bedded in her nails and know that she had not felt this kind of honest tiredness much in life and was humbled.

She began to think about the idea of offspring. At first, she had used as a reference point the image of her husband on top of her, her husband inside her. His quivering, eager penis tearing open her inadequate and shrivelled vagina. Two fumbling hungry spiders, caught in a hasty web still able to conceive the perfect child even under great duress. Husband trapped by her long fangs sunk deep in his jet-velvet back. The moment of conception marked with a spark of brilliant light, the actual cluster of jellied cells emerging from a blooming creamy white flower head. Mrs Dorey’s mind was set alight. Every memory; blue ink in a crossword puzzle. A word set down in a box, a life in itself. The shape forming a snaking river, moment after moment regret upon regret. A lifetime full of the judgements she had made, pretending not to see the homeless man, looking sideways at the scroungers in their designer clothes and expensive trainers, all the truth, all the lies. Such a superficial life with such superficial thoughts. The sum of all her parts, the fear, the ignorance, every thought, every feeling, the futility, the disappointment.  Everything she touched, everything she saw, in town, in the park. Her realisations, her struggles, became the material she used to infuse and shape the gestation of her child.

It was April now, around dusk, the night was wet and blustery, the grudging sky was wanting room for both the warm and the chill. Mrs Dorey opened the fridge and took out raw beef ready to make stew. Knife into cling film, that satisfying pop. She plunged the knife in again, slowly through the meat till she felt the tip penetrate the plotting paper and polystyrene tray underneath. Dropping the knife now she pulled the packaging right away so that she could hold the weighty lump in her hand. Mrs Dorey watched the dribble of watery blood run down her wrist. Her mind detached itself from the body. Thudding the meat back down on the countertop, she tackled the tough sinewy flesh, sawing, hacking away, till she could draw the knife along the inside of the beef. Clutching the handle of the knife she watched the veins in her hands popping out of her sagging skin, her body rushing away from her bones like falling sand in a glass timer. She put a piece of the meat in her mouth, rolled it about on her tongue. Daring to bite down, she swallowed it, mostly whole. This piece, because she had been cold, she told herself. This one, because she had been aggressive, confessing her sins, purging her soul as she ate.

Mrs Dorey took the plate with her out into the garden to feed what was left of the fat and sinew into the hole in the ground. She ran the blade of the steak knife along her palm. Standing over the patch of earth creating swirling patterns with drops of her blood she pressed into the edges of the wound forcing out more than was probably necessary, she would not leave anything to chance. Now she would need a binding agent, she cupped some water from the birdbath and carried it over to the cradle. On her hands and knees, she started to fashion the materials by smoothing, shaping, squeezing and pinching her fingers into the red pulp. The sky darkened, she lost view of her hands, lost all sense of the shapes she had made. She felt her way along from one joint to the next, the texture underneath her hands moving from soft to coarse to bony and tender and everything in between. She felt pain, she felt sweetness, she seated anger alongside loneliness, connected joy to curiosity with a trace of her fingernail. Every material would have its place now.

Mrs Dorey awoke the next morning, her torso still limp and sprawled over the kitchen table. Her hands were stained rust red, she noticed her arms were covered in clotted wounds all the way up to the elbow, her dress once respectable was now transformed by its complete immersion in the mud of her creation’s birth. The girl had been standing in the doorway masked by the casting shadows of the hallway, she knew instinctively that Mrs Dorey was her sole source of nourishment and care. The child had waited not moving the whole night. Mrs Dorey offered her bread, she started with a tiny piece then tore off a crust, the girl was so hungry. Soon Mrs Dorey offered her a whole slice covered in thick cold butter and by the time the whole loaf had been eaten, Mrs Dorey had enticed her from the doorway to the kitchen table. The girl had had to drag herself along, her trail, a smear of blood. She took drops of water from Mrs Dorey’s fingers and frantically began to lick her hands. Mrs Dorey punished herself for her stupidity when she realised the girl must be cold. She fetched a blanket and rubbed the girl’s patchy fur and wafer-thin skin as though her life depended on it. The more she rubbed the more she realised the girl would never feel warm to the touch. Mrs Dorey tried to pull a brush through her thick clumps of hair, she tried to clean the girl with soap and a warm flannel, she tried to uncurl her one clawed finger and medicate her weeping half-closed eye. Mrs Dorey could never get rid of the blood and the dirt, and when she scrubbed away at the child’s dead skin she saw new dead skin blister up, cracking, and splitting underneath, as it stretched with new growth across her body. From now on, Mrs Dorey fed the girl what loaves she could. She made sure drops of water ran from her fingers into the child’s gaping mouth. She did her utmost to love the child as ever Mrs Dorey could love.

Mrs Dorey came into the kitchen one afternoon to find that her child, had ventured out into the garden and was staring into the cradle where she had been born. Mrs Dorey joined her, they stood beside each other now, the little girl’s finger rolled inside Mrs Dorey’s hand, the girl’s angular bony head resting deep in her side. They stayed that way till dusk when Mrs Dorey knew it was time to leave. Gently nudging the girl to one side, she stepped down into the hole. Mrs Dorey removed her dress, its pattern of red roses seemed to take coiled root in the soil as it dropped to the ground. Before dawn, the girl finished covering the grave where she allowed herself to sleep upon the mound of upturned soil, dreaming of the woman enfolded underneath. The bright sun fought against the harsh morning frost and revealed the cold against soft new skin. She unfolded herself, stretched out her young, long, limbs. And so, picking up the rose print dress at her side, she took her first step.   

Robyn Hunt (c) June 2016

Blog Image: Gavin Roberts

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 With Special Thanks to Stephen Thompson