Now the little track is under sentence of death and may be executed next year. There’s no waiting room, nowhere to hide from the squalling wind or beating rain. This is a modern platform.
The wheezing train shuddered to a halt and belched. It was dirty, four carriages long, no sign of guard or conductor. No sign of a driver except for a folded copy of the Sun at the engine window. Inside, the hot smell of brakes and the rich smell of oil colluded with the unswept floor into familiar railway nausea. I felt at home at once and settled to watch the scenery through an evocative film of dust.
In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? ‘All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.’ In fact it’s the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.
Misery is a vacuum. A space without air, a suffocated dead place, the abode of the miserable. Misery is a tenement block, rooms like battery cages, sit over your own droppings, lie on your own filth. Misery is a no U-turns, no stopping road. Travel down it pushed by those behind, tripped by those in front. Travel down it at furious speed though the days are mummified in lead. It happens so fast once you get started, there’s no anchor from the real world to slow you down, nothing to hold on to. Misery pulls away the brackets of life leaving you to free fall. Whatever your private hell, you’ll find millions like it in Misery. This is the town where everyone’s nightmares come true.
In the train carriage, shut behind the thick glass, I feel comfortably locked away from responsibility. I know I’m running away but my heart has become a sterile zone where nothing can grow. I don’t want to face facts, shape up, snap out of it. In the pumped-out, dry bed of my heart, I’m learning to live without oxygen. I might get to like it in a masochistic way. I’ve sunk too low to make decisions and that brings with it a certain lightheaded freedom. Walking on the moon there’s no gravity. There are dead souls in uniform ranks, spacesuits too bulky for touch, helmets too heavy for speech. The miserable millions moving in time without hope. There are no clocks in Misery, just an endless ticking.
The train has been delayed and we are sitting in a cutting with nothing but the rustle of an evening paper and the tired stirrings of the engine. Nothing will intrude upon this passive derelict scene. I’ve got my feet up on the stained upholstery. The man two seats away is snoring in sleep. We can’t get out and we can’t get on. What does it matter? Why not relax in the overheated stagnant air? IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY BREAK GLASS. This is an emergency but I can’t lift my arm high enough to smash my way out. I haven’t got the strength to sound the alarm. I want to stand up strong and tall, leap through the window, brush the shards from my sleeve and say, ‘That was yesterday, this is today.’ I want to accept what I’ve done and let go. I can’t let go because Louise might still be on the other end of the rope.
The station at the village is a small one and leads directly on to a lane and through fields spread with winter wheat. There’s never a ticket collector, only a 40-watt bulb and a sign that says ‘THIS WAY’. I’m thankful for a little guidance.
The path is bulked with cinders that give a high-pitched clink under your shoes. Your shoes will have charcoal patches and flakes of white ash but it’s better than mud on a rainy night. It’s not raining tonight. The sky is clear and hard, not a cloud, only stars and a drunken moon swinging on her back. There’s a line of ash trees by the picket fence that takes you out of man-made things into the deep country where the land’s not good for anything but sheep. I can hear the sheep munching invisibly over tussocks of grass thick as a pelt. Be careful to keep on the right, there’s a ditch.
I could have got a taxi that late night, not chosen to walk six miles without a torch. It was the slap of the cold, the shock in my lungs that sent me up the cinder path and away from the pub and the telephone. I slung my bag on my back and made for the outline of the hill. Up and over. Three miles up, three miles down. We walked all night once, Louise and I, walked out of darkness as though it were a tunnel. We walked into the morning, the morning was waiting for us, it was already perfect, high sun over a level plain. Looking back I thought I saw the darkness where we had left it. I didn’t think it could come after us.
I barged my way through a herd of cattle, hooves braceleted with mud. My own feet were clod-fettered. I hadn’t anticipated the run-off, the slow slopes of the hill served as a drain bath for engorged springs. The rain on the dry land from a dry summer hadn’t penetrated through the soil to the aquifers, only as far as the springs that fed them. They burst out in froth torrents to end in paddy pools where the cattle waded for long grass. I was lucky that the moon reflected in these waters, picking a path for me, mud-laden but not sodden. My town shoes and flimsy socks put up no resistance. My long coat was soon spattered. The cows reserved for me the incredulous looks that animals give humans in the country. We seem so silly, not a part of nature at all. The interlopers upsetting the rigid economy of hunter and hunted. Animals know what’s what until they meet us. Well, tonight the cows have the last laugh. Their peaceful ruminations, their easy bodies, black against the slope of the hill, mock the flapping figure with a heavy bag who stumbles against them. Woa there! Bring that rump back. As a vegetarian I can’t even contemplate revenge. Could you kill a cow? It’s a game I play with myself sometimes. What could I kill? I get as far as a duck and then I see one on the pond, daft quacking, bum up diving, webbers yellow slashing the brown water. Scoop it out and wring its neck? I’ve brought them down with a gun and that’s easier because it’s remote. I won’t eat what I can’t kill. It seems shoddy, hypocritical. You cows have nothing to fear from me. As a body, the cows raise their heads. Like men in johns, cows and sheep do things in unison. I’ve always found it disturbing. What have gazing, grazing and micturating got in common?
I went to pee behind a bush. Why in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, one still seeks out a bush is another of life’s mysteries.
At the top of the hill, on dry ground, a whistling wind and a view. The lights of the village were like war-time coordinates, a secret council of houses and tracks muffled by darkness. I sat down to finish an egg and cress sandwich. A rabbit ran by and gave me that look of incredulity before flashing its scut down a hole.
Lights in ribbons where the road runs. Hard flares far away at the industrial estate. In the sky the red and green landing lights of an aircraft full of sleepy people. Straight below the softer village lights, and in the distance a single light hung above the others like a guiding lantern in a window. A land lighthouse making certain the route. I wished that it was my house. That having climbed to the top I could see where I was going. My way lay through gloomy thicket and a sharp plunge before the long lane home.
I miss you Louise. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. What then kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought. To leave the dishes unwashed, the bed unmade, to ignore you in the mornings, make use of you at night. To crave another while pecking your cheek. To say your name without hearing it, to assume it is mine to call.
Why didn’t I hear you when you told me you wouldn’t go back to Elgin? Why didn’t I see your serious face? I did think I was doing the right thing and I thought it was for the right reasons. Time has exposed to me a certain stickiness at the centre. What were my heroics and sacrifices really about? Your pig-headedness or my own?
A friend of mine said before I left London, ‘At least your relationship with Louise didn’t fail. It was the perfect romance.’
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Was it? Is that what perfection costs? Operatic heroics and a tragic end? What about a wasteful end? Most opera ends wastefully. The happy endings are compromises. Is that the choice?
Louise, stars in your eyes, my own constellation. I was following you faithfully but I looked down. You took me out beyond the house, over the roofs, way past commonsense and good behaviour. No compromise. I should have trusted you but I lost my nerve.
I scrambled up and judged or guessed my way through the scrubland down to the lane. It was slow going, an hour and a half before I threw my bag over the final ditch and leapt across. Now the moon was high and casting long shadows on the rough road. Silence but for the sudden fox-dart in the trees. Silence but for the early owl. Silence but for my feet scuffing the gravel.
About half a mile away from my cottage I saw it was lit up. Gail Right knew I was coming back, I had telephoned her at the bar. She’d been looking after the cat and had promised to lay me a fire and leave some food. I wanted the food and fire but not Gail Right. She would be too big, too present, and I felt I was becoming less present every day. I was tired from walking. My body had a satisfying numbness to it. I wanted my bed, oblivion for a while. I resolved to be firm with Gail.
The moon made the ground look frosty. The ground was silver under my shoes. Where the river ran in a thick line through the trees a low mist hung over the water. The rush of the water was bass and hard, solid deep. I bent and swilled my face, let the cold drops run down my scarf to my thorax. I shook myself and cleaved lungs with air, a hammer of cold that hit from pit to throat. Very cold now and above me a hang of metal stars.
I went into the cottage, the door was unlocked, and there was Gail Right half asleep in the chair. The fire burned like a spell and there were fresh flowers on the table. Fresh flowers and a table-cloth. New curtains in the ragged window. My heart sank. Gail must be moving in.
She woke up and checked her face in the mirror, then she gave me a little kiss and unwound my scarf.
‘You’re wet through.’
‘I stopped at the river.’
‘Not thinking of ending it all I hope?’
I shook my head and took off my coat that seemed too big for me.
‘Sit down honey. I’ve got the tea.’
I sat down in the saggy armchair. Is this the proper ending? If not the proper then the inevitable?
Gail returned with a pot steaming like a genie. It was a new pot, not the cracked old thing that had festered on the shelf. New pots for old.
‘I couldn’t find her Gail.’
She patted me. ‘Where did you look?’
‘All the places there were to look. She’s gone.’
‘People don’t vanish.’
‘Of course they do. She came out of the air and now she’s returned to it. Wherever she is I can’t go there.’
‘And if you could?’
‘I would. If I believed in the after-life I’d throw myself in the trout-marked river tonight.’
‘Don’t do that,’ said Gail. ‘I can’t swim.’
‘Do you think she’s dead?’
‘Do you?’
‘I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t even get near finding her. It’s as if Louise never existed, like a character in a book. Did I invent her?’
‘No, but you tried to,’ said Gail. ‘She wasn’t yours for the making.’
‘Don’t you think it’s strange that life, described as so rich and full, a camel-trail of adventure, should shrink to this coin-sized world? A head on one side, a story on the other. Someone you loved and what happened. That’s all there is when you dig in your pockets. The most significant thing is someone else’s face. What else is embossed on your hands but her?’
‘You still love her then?’
‘With all my heart.’
‘What will you do?’
‘What can I do? Louise once said, “It’s the clichés that cause the trouble.” What do you want me to say? That I’ll get over it? That’s right, isn’t it? Time is a great deadener.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Gail.
‘So am I. I’d like to be able to tell her the truth.’
From the kitchen door Louise’s face. Paler, thinner, but her hair still mane-wide and the colour of blood. I put out my hand and felt her fingers, she took my fingers and put them to her mouth. The scar under the lip burned me. Am I stark mad? She’s warm.
This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in this room. Beyond the door, where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm. Hurry now, it’s getting late. I don’t know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Jeanette Winterson lives in London and the Cotswolds.
Books by Jeanette Winterson
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
The Passion
Sexing the Cherry
Written on the Body
Art & Lies
Art Objects (essays)
Gut Symmetries
The World and Other Places
The PowerBook
Lighthousekeeping
Tanglewreck
The Stone Gods
The Battle of the Sun
BOOKS BY JEANETTE WINTERSON
ART & LIES
A train hurtles through the future with three passengers on board: a disillusioned surgeon named Handel, whose humanity has been sacrificed to intellect; a woman artist named Picasso, cast out by a family that drove her to madness; and the lesbian poet sappho, who has propagated her subversive gospel through centuries of censorship and exile. Out of their interwoven stories comes an impassioned, philosophical, and daring novel that burns with phosphorescent prose on every page.
Fiction/Literature
GUT SYMMETRIES
One starry night on a boat in the mid-Atlantic, Alice, a brilliant English theoretical physicist, begins an affair with Jove, her remorselessly seductive American counterpart. But Jove is married. When Alice confronts his wife, Stella, she swiftly falls in love with her, with consequences that are by turns horrifying, comic, and arousing. Vaulting from Liverpool to New York, from alchemy to string theory, and from the spirit to the flesh, Gut Symmetries is a thrillingly original novel by England’s most flamboyantly gifted writer.
Fiction/Literature
WRITTEN ON THE BODY
The narrator of Written on the Body has neither name nor gender; the beloved is a married woman. And as Winterson chronicles their consuming affair, she compels us to see love stripped of clichés and categories, as a phenomenon as visceral as blood and organs, bone and tissue—and as strange as an undiscovered continent.
Fiction/Literature
THE POWERBOOK
Ali writes stories on e-mail for anyone who wants them. She promises “freedom just for one night”—but she does not do so without a warning: the story might change you. Ask for an epic love story and you will get one, but Ali will be cast in it, too, and the lines between the real and the imagined may blur. Plucking characters from history and myth as well as her imagination, Ali journeys through time and stops in London, Paris, and Capri, all the while weaving stories that question the boundaries of cyberspace, the human heart, and the novel.
Fiction/Literature
ART OBJECTS
Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery
In these ten intertwined essays, one of our most provocative novelists proves that she is just as stylish and outrageous as an art critic. For when Jeanette Winterson looks at works as diverse as the Mona Lisa and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, she frees them from layers of preconception and restores their power to exalt and unnerve, shock and transform us. Whether she is writing about the demands paintings make on t
heir viewers, the subversive “autobiography” of Gertrude Stein, the ghettoization of gay and lesbian writers, or the origins of her own defiant love affair with language, Winterson continually reminds us that the term “art objects” denotes not only things but acts. Art objects to the lie that life is small, fragmented, and mean; it instead proclaims the opposite. And so does Winterson’s wise and fiery book.
Criticism/Literature
THE WORLD AND OTHER PLACES
With language as dazzling as the wondrous visionary landscapes they evoke, these seventeen works transport the reader to worlds in which sleep is illegal, the lives of lonely department store clerks are transformed by fairies, the rich wear coal jewelry on an island of diamonds, and the living laminate their dead. Here is a universe where rooms go missing, women give birth to their lovers, and the young contemplate God’s creative powers through pet tortoises. These beguiling stories, by turns startlingly passionate and cannily satirical, chart an extraordinary writing career.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-70236-5
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Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
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