44

Fallout

Atomic by Donna McLean

They blockaded the gate, Janet swayed with the bodies around her, the police hauled them like sacks out of the way.  Monica found her clinging to the fence shouting through it, the rage of sixteen years an explosion in her lungs.  So this was what the patriarchy looked like. Men telling women what to do.  Men seducing girls and promising them the world, men telling girls they should be happy.  A cruise missile or a kitchen stove, what was the difference, it was a lie. All of it. They got to have their playthings, shape the world how they liked it, get their dinner cooked, their wife fucked or in Janet’s case, not fucked.  Monica took her by the hand and led her to the old ambulance parked up on the side of the road, a home she’d made herself, governed by no one but her; she shut the doors and kissed her, they left their boots outside. 

All night, her hands on Janet’s skin, Monica touching places Janet never touched herself, finding buttons Janet didn’t know existed.  She’d only ever slept with Ray, they’d only ever done it twice, he’d told her once was enough. She’d said, What about the pill, Ray? I could go on the pill, but he’d said what with all the pain she had every month it could only make it worse, and she hadn’t questioned why he thought he knew more about women’s problems than she did. She hadn’t questioned the gynaecologist at the hospital either, when she’d finally got an appointment after months and months of waiting, he’d given her one look over and told her women with hysterical wombs shouldn’t go on contraception, and to have another child or take an aspirin.

She’d forgotten she had a body until Monica.  Monica made her make noises she felt ashamed of till she did it again and then did it to herself and then showed Janet how to do it and Janet was too tired, too full, too happy to care what anyone thought.  When they emerged the next morning, stumbling and famished and searching for food and water,  a few women grunted but instead of being embarrassed, Monica laughed.  They ate a sandwich standing up and dunked their heads under the standpipe like Bridget had done, and then they went back to bed. A light was switched on in Janet.  A thirty-four years in the pitch-black light and now the world looked different.  So this is what a feminist looked like, she caught sight of herself in the tiny mirror above Monica’s bed. Dishevelled. Alive. Naked. It wasn’t until she touched the fence and Monica touched her that she saw.

She’d had it all mapped out, this way of making something unplanned into a plan that worked better than what she’d thought her life would be at seventeen.  She’d done everything she could to make it right, a man twice her age telling her she was too good for school, with those looks she could be in a magazine.  She’d entered the house he’d bought when it had cost half the price it would now and couldn’t believe her luck, a whole house to herself, it had shut her mum up, no man her own age could have afforded such a thing, her dad had said as much when he’d packed her off with a pat on the backside as if his work was done.  And look what Ray had done for her, see how he loved her, he was going to take care of her, it was going to be all right.  And then night school had ended when she couldn’t take the bus and Ray said he couldn’t be expected to drive her all the time, and what did she want an A-level for anyway, shouldn’t she be getting ready for the baby, it didn’t need to know about the Renaissance now did it, it wasn’t Rembrandt who’d be changing nappies.  She hadn’t corrected him on any points, she’d just looked at her belly and felt afraid. 

And she hadn’t done any of the things she’d said she’d do, she hadn’t done one of them.  She hadn’t bought oils once Ray had pointed out that they’d be bad for the baby, and she hadn’t bought acrylics after Bridget wouldn’t stop crying in the shop and the pram had got stuck and knocked a shelf of chalks and she’d been too embarrassed to go back.  Her sister had given her a watercolour set, she’d used them a for a while, in between clearing up breakfast and getting the lunch on, but one summer at the campsite Janet had asked Ray if he could watch the kids for an hour, and Ray had leaned over to the couple next to them at the pool and said, My wife likes to take her little paints with her everywhere, she’s that keen! as if it was a joke. She’d walked down to the river and thrown them in, paints, brushes, paper, the lot. They had drifted and floated and sunk bleeding.  And the room that had going to be her art room that she’d never used for more than five minutes staring at it then shutting the door, saying she wasn’t ready, became Paul’s room. 

At careers they’d never said, Skivvy.  They’d never said cleaner, dogsbody, baby maker, cook.  They’d said she’d be good at accounts.  They’d said artist wasn’t a career, and Ray had said the same.  She bet they’d never said, Tranny, when he went for his careers advice back in the eighteen hundreds or whenever it was he was at school.  She bet they never said, You look like the sort who’d look good in a bit of lippy.  Go on, son.  Make a life of it.  She bet the lads at Seymours didn’t know. 

When Janet emerged again on Tuesday, leaving the soft clutches of Monica who groaned and slept and turned over, she found Kate and Maureen by the fire.

“They crushed Maureen’s car.”

“Come on now pet,” Maureen put an arm round Kate.  “There’s worse things.”

“But where are you going to live?”

“I’ll find somewhere.”

Kate seemed inconsolable.

“Her husband’s gone off,” said Maureen.

All Janet could think about was Monica. She could still smell her on her skin.

“He took the girls.  He just up and left,” sobbed Kate.  “I mean, what did I do?  Bloody sixteen years washing his dishes and bearing his children and cooking his meals and what do I get?  One step out of line and wham, he’s off, accusing me of abandoning the children.  I spend my life with our children, my girls are my life,” she cried harder.  “Day in day out, they’re all I think about.  What sort of a world does he think he’s leaving for them?  This one?  Run by men? And his mother,” she blew her nose.  “Won’t she be pleased.  Running back to mummy.  Fuck.”

Janet had never heard Kate swear before.  Everything was new.

“I suppose yours has given in,” she turned red eyes to Janet.

“I haven’t seen him,” said Janet, not caring.

“Peggy said Bridget came round.”

“At home?  Did you see her?”  A thousand years ago which was really only a few days ago she’d come to find her.  “Was Ray there?”  Instead she’d found herself.

Kate shook her head. 

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