Well, Fagus had improved, and stopped improving – like dough that had done all the rising it could – and so maybe it would be the same for her. That’s what they said anyway. You’ll feel better soon, until she’d stopped telling them that she felt unwell. It wasn’t her body that was ill. The blood had been washed away, her belly had deflated, it no longer hurt to pee – she’d improved and stopped improving; his wobbly journey across the lawn was a triumph in the way getting out of bed was a success for her.

She took Wuthering Heights from the bookshelf, and Gardens of England tipped against the Bible leaving a little triangular gap. The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, she thought, looking at the three points. This is what keeps happening, staring at things, wondering whether to shuffle the books straight or leave that Holy Trinity hole. Either choice seemed worrisome. Stew. That’s what she’d been going to do – ask Everett for a bowl of stew. She left the bookcase and the triangle, she put Wuthering Heights on the table and went out of the room, along the hall and into the kitchen. But when she came back in again, orders given, the indecision of the bookcase bore into her back, and she got up and shuffled the books straight.

She felt silly, sitting there, waiting for her meal like an imbecile in dressing gown and slippers, so she got up and went upstairs and got a shawl. She could say she thought she had the beginnings of a cold. When she came back to the dining room, her bowl of stew was waiting there, steaming on the table, cutlery and napkin beside it. Wuthering Heights was back on the shelf. Now she’d have to go through the whole thing again.

She decided against it and ate her stew instead. It was perfectly possible that it was delicious, but she couldn’t tell – it was muted like everything else. Stew. Eat. Fork. Mouth. Later she’d perform some other function that showed she was alive, like washing her face or defecating, washing her bits in the bidet. Perhaps this was what life really was. Muted colours and bodily functions, an existence where nothing really mattered. Would anyone notice if she disappeared completely? Undoubtedly not. Stew. Eat. Fork. Mouth.

She managed half of it before she got tired of chewing, and gave up. It was only Monday – she had a whole week to rouse herself. She could turn on the taps in the bathroom and pretend to be having a bath, while lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling. Then she could go back to bed again, her thoughts covered with gauze, a bandage stuck with exhaustion and tiny hands, a white blaze of nothing through which she couldn’t see and didn’t want to.

Enid, 1924

16

Enid, 1924