Does it matter anyway?

Immortality.

Needy vanity.

Anyway I want to cure myself – not just the bodily wounds, but those in my heart and soul. My belly will always carry a scar, but I see no reason why I should tolerate them in any other part of my being.

I know what advice my mother would give if I were to broach such thoughts.

Exercise in moderation, given my post-operative condition.

Good healthy food.

Lots of sleep.

Sea bathing.

Work.

Getting out and seeing your friends.

No introspection.

I’ve had all this advice before. I’ve also heard it being given to others. My sisters. My nieces.

It’s not advice she gives to men.

She never mentions God.

She herself has some brisk kind of relationship with God; consisting mainly I think of her telling Him where He’s going wrong, but she doesn’t expect any of us either to believe or disbelieve. I think she thinks that she is better at looking after us than He could ever possibly be.

‘No man is worth breaking your heart over.’ I heard her say that to my sister Rosie once ages ago, when Rosie had just been dumped by some rugby-playing jerk. ‘Particularly not that man!’ I misguidedly put in my tuppenceworth – at which moment they both turned and ate the face off me! That’s what you get for involving yourself in family life.

No introspection.

‘You think too much, Clara.’ She says that quite frequently. I exasperate her quite frequently.

Probably not as often as she exasperates me. Oh botheration, what am I doing sitting here thinking about my mother?

I really want to work out the first moment when a wisp of doubt crossed my mind.

As the weeks went past …

The Gingerbread Woman

(continued)

As the weeks went past and spring turned into delicious early summer, I slowly closed all my faculties down. My life shrank to work, and my meetings with James. Three evenings a week he came to my apartment, laden with bags and bottles and flowers. I bought the candles. That was all I was expected to do. Twelve candles – red, green, white, yellow, sometimes even gold or silver. He became like an excited child when he entered my door; the trappings of New York tumbled from his shoulders as he unpacked his picnics, opening waxed paper parcels, laying the delicious prizes that he had brought on the table in front of me. We ate on those evenings food from Japan, Mexico, China, Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Israel and India. We became connoisseurs of wine from all over the world. From seven-thirty to eleven three nights a week we became drunk with wine and laughter and love. He told me all about his life – school, Harvard, his father’s fairly recent death in a motor accident and his subsequent close and almost stifling relationship with his mother. His father’s death was still too recent for him to try to disentangle himself from her. She still needed, he told me, his constant attention, his presence, the reassurance of his total love. I understood. I promised him that I did. I really believed that I understood. As I mentioned, my faculties were closing down.