Magda looks totally incredible. And she knows it. She grins at me.
“I hated my new look so I decided to go for an even newer one,” she says. “You were so right, Ellie. Why should I scuttle round like a colorless creep just because of those sad bastards. I want to be me again.”
“Well, well, Magda!” says Mrs. Henderson, bustling into the classroom. “I think I’m going to need sunglasses to look at your new hairdo. That is not an appropriate color for school. If I were in a bad mood I’d make you cover it up with a headscarf but mercifully for you I’m feeling mellow.” She smiles benignly. “Did you have a good Christmas, girls?” She catches sight of me. “Oh, dear, Ellie. You did not have a good Christmas. You’ve obviously been starving yourself, you silly girl.”
“I’m just getting fit, Mrs. Henderson. I thought you’d approve,” I say, secretly thrilled.
Mrs. Henderson is frowning at me. “You and I had better have a private chinwag later, Ellie.”
Then Nadine comes into the classroom—and Mrs. Henderson is diverted. Her mouth actually drops open. The entire class stares, jaws gaping.
Nadine hasn’t changed her hairstyle.
She hasn’t changed her weight.
She’s changed her face.
She stands nonchalantly in the doorway, the wintery sunlight full on her face. She has a tattoo! A long black snake starts at her temple and writhes right across her forehead and down one cheek, the tip of its tail ending in a wiggle at her chin.
“Dear goodness, girl, what have you done to yourself?” Mrs. Henderson gasps.
“Nadine! That is so––”
“Amazing!”
“Gross!”
“Disgusting!”
“Incredible!”
“Supercool!”
Nadine, the amazing gross disgusting incredible supercool snake woman, grins at us all and then puts her hand to her forehead. She pulls— and the snake wriggles right off her face and hangs limply from her fingers.
“Father Christmas put a joke tattoo in my stocking,” she says, while we all scream at her.
“You bad bad girl,” says Mrs. Henderson. “My mellow mood is rapidly disappearing. I feel as if I need another holiday already!”
She’s a good sport all the same but I’m going to do my best to keep out of her way the next few days. I don’t like the sound of this private chinwag.
We have a morning assembly as it’s the first day of term. I crane my neck looking for Zoë but I can’t see her anywhere. Maybe she’s still abroad with her family?
Magda gives me a nudge.
“Hey, who’s the dishy dreamboat on the stage?” she whispers.
“He can’t be a teacher!” says Nadine.
We have three male teachers already. Mr. Prescott takes us for history. He looks as if he’s stepped straight out of the Victorian age, and acts it too. He’s stern, stiff, uptight and ancient. Mr. Daleford is the IT teacher, with all the warmth and charisma of his own beloved computers. He even talks like a machine. And Mr. Pargiter teaches French. He’s quite sweet but very balding, very tubby and very middle-aged so he’s not exactly dreamboat category.
The man on the stage is youngish, definitely still in his twenties. He’s got tousled dark-blond hair, which looks wonderful with his black clothes—black button-down shirt, thin black tie, black jeans, black boots.
“This is Mr. Windsor, girls—our new art teacher,” says the head.
Mr. Windsor shyly nods his blond head. Every girl in the hall stares transfixed. Wow!
portrait girl
We can’t wait for our first art lesson.
Mr. Windsor talks for ages about art, his eyes shining (dark brown, a beautiful contrast to his blond hair). He shows us these reproductions of his favorite paintings, whizzing through the centuries so he can tell us about the different techniques and styles. He also throws in a lot of interesting stuff about the painters themselves and their lifestyles.
“Yeah, it was fine for them, all these painter guys,” says Magda. “But what about women artists? They didn’t get a look-in, did they? I mean, you call all this lot Old Masters, don’t you, so where are the Old Mistresses?”
“Ah! You’re obviously a fierce feminist and you’ve got a jolly good point, too,” he says, smiling at the newly gorgeous scarlet Magda.
She’s not a feminist at all. I don’t think she cares tuppence about art, either. She just wants Mr. Windsor to take notice of her, and it’s certainly worked.
So then he goes on about the secondary role of women artists through the ages, starting off with nuns in convents poring over illuminated manuscripts. Then he tells us about a female artist called Artemisia Gentileschi who was raped and he shows us this amazing painting she did of Judith cutting off this guy’s head, with blood spurting everywhere. Lots of the girls shudder and go “Yuck” but Nadine cranes forward to take a closer look as she’s into anything seriously gory. She’s applied her joke snake tattoo to her arm now, so that the forked-tongue snake’s head wiggles out of her school blouse and down across her hand.
Mr. Windsor spots this and admires it. He flicks through a big book on sixties pop art and holds up this picture of an astonishing model called Snake Woman. She’s got snakes coiling round her head like living scarves, and her body is all over scales.
“And it’s by a woman, too,” he says, grinning at Magda.
I’m getting to feel horribly left out and let down. I’m the one who’s mad keen on art and yet I can’t think of a single thing to say. He holds up a picture of Frida Kahlo and it’s the very one I’ve got pinned up in my bedroom at home. I can’t really put up my hand and announce this—I’ll sound so wet. So I listen while he talks about Frida and her savage Mexican art. I nod passionately at everything he says. Eventually he sees this and looks at me expectantly.
“Do you like Frida Kahlo’s work?”
Here’s my chance. I swallow, ready to say something, anything—and in the sudden silence my tummy suddenly rumbles. Everyone hears. All the girls around me snigger. My face flushes the colour of Magda’s hair.
“It sounds as if you’re ready for your lunch,” says Mr. Windsor.
He waits for me to comment. I can’t. So he starts talking about another artist called Paula Rego. I just about die. My stupid stomach goes on rumbling. There’s nothing I can do about it. Why can’t it shut up? He’ll think I’m just this awful greedy girl who wants to stuff her face every five minutes. It’s not fair. I’ve been so careful recently, totally in control. I’ve only eaten a few mouthfuls at every meal. I didn’t even have breakfast this morning, or any supper last night.
Which is why my stomach is rumbling.
Why I feel so sick.
Why I feel so tired I can’t think of a thing to say.
Why I keep missing out on what Mr. Windsor is saying. It’s really interesting, too. I hadn’t even heard of Paula Rego before. She’s done all these extraordinary pictures in chalk. I can tell by the colors in his big book of reproductions that they’re just like my new Christmas present pastels. She does pictures of women unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. They are big women, ugly women, in odd contorted positions.
“Why does she paint women like that? They look awful,” says Magda.
“I don’t think they look awful. I think they’re incredible,” says Mr. Windsor. “Maybe they look awful to you because we’ve all become so conditioned to think women should only look a certain way. Think of all the well-known portraits of women. The women are all prettified in passive poses, the body extended so that all the bulges are smoothed out. The face is frequently a blank mask, no lines, no tension, no character at all. These are lively expressive real women, standing awkwardly, stretching, dancing, doing all sorts of things.”
“But they’re fat,” I whisper.
Mr. Windsor reads my lips.
“You girls! You’re all brainwashed. They’re big women, they’re strong, they’ve got sturdy thighs, real muscles in their arms and legs
. But they’re soft too, they’re vulnerable, they’re valiant. They’re not beautiful women. So what? Beauty is just fashion. Male artists have used beautiful women throughout the centuries but their sizes and proportions keep changing. If you were alive in the Middle Ages then your ideal pinup girl had a high forehead and a tiny bosom and a great big tummy. A century later Titian liked large firm women with big bottoms. Rubens liked his women large too, but wobbly. Goya’s women were white and slender, then Renoir liked them very big and salmon pink.”
“And Picasso liked his ladies with eyes in the side of their heads!” says Magda, and we all laugh, Mr. Windsor too.
Why can’t it be me making him laugh? I rack my brains for something to say . . . but I’m running out of time. The bell goes before I can come up with anything.
Mr. Windsor sets us all art homework.
“I want you all to do a self-portrait. You can use any medium you like. Don’t forget to bring it with you next time, right? When do we meet up for art again?”
Next Friday. I can’t wait. We spend the next lesson whispering about the wondrous Mr. Windsor.
“Isn’t he fantastic?” says Magda.
“He’s got such a lovely sense of humor, too,” says Nadine.
“It’s OK for you two. You both made a big impression on him. I just made a right idiot of myself,” I wail.
“You should have spoken up for yourself,” says Magda.
“You should have told him that you and Zoë did all the mural. That would have impressed him,” says Nadine.
“I couldn’t just announce the fact. It would look like I was showing off,” I say.
I wonder if Mr. Windsor might like Zoë and me to do some special artwork like Mrs. Lilley used to? I still haven’t see Zoë. At lunchtime I go to Mrs. Henderson’s aerobics class to catch Zoë there.
Lots of girls in Lycra shorts are bobbing up and down but Zoë isn’t one of them. I join in anyway though I find it horribly hard going. I have to stop several times to lean against the wall and gasp for breath. I don’t seem to be getting any fitter. Is it because I’m still far too fat? Or is it because I’ve tried to get thin too quickly? My head spins. I can’t think straight anymore.
“Are you all right, Ellie?” Mrs. Henderson asks at the end of the class.
“I’m . . . fine,” I gasp.
“Are you kidding yourself? Because you’re certainly not kidding me,” says Mrs. Henderson. “Ellie, how am I going to make you see sense? I’m so worried about you. I think I’m going to get in touch with your parents.”
“No, don’t, please! There’s nothing wrong with me, Mrs. Henderson, honestly.”
“You’re obviously starving yourself.”
“No, I’m not. I eat heaps, honestly I do.”
“Oh, Ellie. This is a nightmare. It’s the Zoë situation all over again. She wouldn’t listen to reason either and now she’s in hospital.”
“Why? What’s the matter with her?”
“You know perfectly well she’s anorexic.”
“But it’s not an illness!”
“Of course it is. And now Zoë has made herself so dangerously ill she’s had to be hospitalized. She collapsed over Christmas. She very nearly died of heart failure.”
It’s so scary I can hardly take it in. I ask Mrs. Henderson which hospital Zoë’s in, and after school I phone Anna and tell her I’ve got to go and visit a sick friend so I won’t be home till late.
I hate the hospital. My heart starts pounding as soon as I get off the bus and see the big red building with its tower and chimney and endless odd extensions, like a perverted version of a fairy castle. People always go on about hospital smells but it’s hospital color that I can’t stand. There are hideous orange plastic chairs in the waiting areas. I remember sitting hunched up on one for hours, sucking my way through an entire packet of fruit gums, whining for my mother. Who was somewhere I wasn’t allowed to go. Dying.
Orange is supposed to be a cheerful color but it always makes me want to cry. I feel tearful now, which is silly, because my mother died years and years ago. And Zoë isn’t going to die—is she? I don’t even know her that well, it’s not like she’s my best friend like Nadine and Magda. I suppose she’s the girl I identify with most. So maybe I’m scared I’m going to die. Which is completely mad. I’m not too thin, I’m still really grossly fat.
It takes me ages to track Zoë down. I’m told she’s in Skylark ward but when I get there and tiptoe past all these pale patients lying listlessly on their pillows I can’t find her anywhere. There’s one empty bed and I start to panic, thinking she really has died, but when I eventually find a nurse she says that now Zoë’s heart condition is stabilized she’s been transferred to Nightingale ward in the annex across the road.
I’ve heard of Nightingale. It’s the psychiatric unit. If one of the girls is acting extra loopy at school then people say she’ll end up in Nightingale. The local nuthouse. Once we were in the car near the hospital and I saw a large wild-eyed woman running down the road in her nylon nightie and fur-trimmed slippers and Dad said she was obviously legging it out of Nightingale.
I remember her red sweaty face and the spittle drooling down her chin. What are they doing, shutting Zoë up with a lot of mad people? She’s not mad.
I’m scared of going into the Nightingale building. I’m not even sure they’ll let me in. Maybe they don’t allow visitors.
But I force myself to go and see. There are people wandering round the grounds. No one’s wearing nightclothes. No one looks particularly mad or distressed. Maybe they’re not patients, maybe they’re visitors or staff? Or maybe Nightingale isn’t a psychiatric ward anymore? There aren’t any locked gates at the entrance to the ward. I can go right in.
An old man is leaning against the wall. He’s saying something but when I look at him he hides his face, still mumbling into his fingers. A woman bustles past, walking too fast, biting the back of her hand agitatedly. Oh, God. It’s the psychiatric ward all right.
I peer round, expecting mad-eyed maniacs to come hopping down the corridor in straitjackets, but the people here seem sad rather than mad and they’re not really frightening. I proceed up the corridor nervously until I get to the nursing station.
“Can I help?” says a woman in a T-shirt and jeans.
I can’t work out if she’s another patient or a nurse out of uniform. I mumble Zoë’s name.
“Ah, yes. She’s upstairs, in the room at the end. I’m not sure how she feels about visitors at the moment. I think it might be family only.”
“That’s OK, I’m her sister,” I lie smoothly, surprising myself.
“Oh. Well, I suppose that’s all right,” she says doubtfully. “You are over fourteen, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” I say, and I make for the stairs before she can stop me.
I understand why Zoë’s upstairs when I get to this new ward. It’s as if it’s a planet peopled by a strange new sisterhood. Painfully thin girls are sitting watching television, dancing jerkily to pop music, exercising in baggy tracksuits, flicking through magazines, huddling in high-necked sweaters, crying in corners. It’s not just their skeletal state that makes them look alike. They’ve all got withdrawn absorbed expressions on their faces as if they’re watching television screens inside their own heads. Even when they talk to each other they have a zombie look. It’s like they’re all under the same enchanted spell.
For one moment it works on me, too. I look enviously at their high cheekbones and fragile wrists and coltlike knees, feeling grotesquely fat and lumbering in their ethereal presence. But then a nurse walks past carrying a tray—a lively-looking young woman with shiny bobbed hair and a curvy waist and a spring to her step. She’s not thin, she’s not fat, she’s just a normally nourished healthy person. I look at her and then I look at all the anorexic patients.
I see them clearly. I see their thin lank hair, their pale spotty skin, their sunken cheeks, their sad stick limbs, the skeletal inward curve of th
eir hips, the ugly spikiness of their elbows, their hunched posture. I see the full haunted horror of their illness.
“Who are you looking for?” says the nurse.
“Zoë. Er—I’m her sister.”
“Pull the other one,” says the nurse, but she smiles. “She’s not feeling very cooperative so she’s not supposed to have visitors at the moment but maybe you’ll do her good. She’s in the cubicle at the end.”
I approach the drawn curtains apprehensively. You can’t knock on a curtain. I clear my throat instead, and then call out.
“Zoë?”
There’s no answer.
“Zoë?” I say a little more loudly.
I peep round the curtain. Zoë is lying on her bed, curled up like a baby, her head tucked down on her chest. The bones at the top of her spine jut out alarmingly. She is even thinner, so small and sad and sick that I’m not shy anymore.
“Hi, Zoë,” I say, and I sit on her bed.
She looks round, startled. She frowns when she sees it’s me.
‘What are you doing here?” she says fiercely.
“I—I just came to see how you are,” I say, taken aback by her aggression.
“How did you know they’d shoved me in here?”
“Mrs. Henderson told me.”
“That nosy old busybody. So I suppose she’s been telling everyone that I’m in the nuthouse.”
“No! Just me. Because—because we’re friends.”
“No, we’re not. Not really. Look, I don’t want to see anyone, not like this. I look so awful. They’re practically force-feeding me. I know I’ve put on pounds and pounds since I’ve been here. I’m getting so fat.” She clenches her fist and punches her own poor concave stomach.
“Zoë! Don’t be crazy. You’re thin—terribly thin.”
“But not as thin as I was.”
“Thinner. Much thinner. That’s why you’re here. Zoë, you nearly died. You had a heart attack or something.”
“It was just because I took too many laxatives, that’s all. I’m fine now. Well, I would be if they’d only let me out. They’ve given me this absolutely ridiculous target weight. They want to blow me right up into an elephant.”