The Body Read online

  She couldn't have said exactly when she made the decision, but by the time they left the breakfast room, she was certain that she was here to stay.

  *

  "Are you sure you wouldn't like to go down to the beach?" Roger asked.

  "Yes, I'm sure."

  Those rocks in the water had put her off, poking up from the surface of another world, waiting, their attention always turned towards the body, wearing themselves away, but not so quickly that you'd notice, not so quickly that Lara could ever hope to outlast them or their need.

  No, she didn't want to go down to the beach.

  "I mean, we came all this way. If you only wanted a hotel, we could have done that in London, but ... anything you want, darling." He pulled her close. "Anything you want."

  The town centre was crowded and there was an attempt at an outdoor market despite constant rain interrupting the scant sunlight. Though there was nothing they could possibly want, Roger made a show of interest while Lara stopped every now and then and picked up one item or another so that the market sellers didn't feel bad.

  Some of the market sellers were nice, although their voices were fraught with a kind of desperation. They wanted to enjoy their work, but it was work in the end and there wasn't enough money to go around. Some of the market sellers were markedly hostile. Despite their smiles and forced friendly banter, their eyes denounced her supposedly fancy ways and pronounced that she was not from around these parts and never would be and that she should leave, with as much of their wares as her mule of a husband could carry.

  At first, she felt intimidated by the hostility she felt, when all she wanted to do was fit in. Before the morning was out, however, she grew tired of these perceived snipes and she looked one seller in the eye and announced:

  "I wouldn't purchase one of these if they were the last meaningless porcelain trinkets on earth."

  Roger grabbed her arm.

  "Why on earth did you say that?" he said.

  "Because it's true," she said.

  "It's also incredibly rude." H gave the red-faced market seller a twisted, conciliatory grimace.

  "They started it," Lara said. "With all that glaring at me."

  "They're not glaring," he said, pulling her away. "They're staring. They probably haven't seen a woman as beautiful as you before."

  "Oh, you charmer."

  "It's true," he said.

  Having promised not to give any one of them any portion of her fortune, she did, however, buy a quarter of a pound of fudge in a clear plastic bag. After offering one to Roger - he declined - she proceeded to stuff two into her mouth and then immediately reach into the bag for a third.

  "My God," said Roger, laughing. "You ate like a bird at breakfast and now ..."

  "What?" she said, mouth and eyes full. "I'm eating like a pig?"

  "Yes. A delightful, beautiful, kissable pig."

  She pushed the third sugary cube into her mouth before the first two were finished.

  "Are you sure you won't have one?" she said, licking her fingers. "They're delicious."

  He watched her eat with a look of marvel on his face, declining once again to partake, making a quip about the risk of not getting his fingers back. She shrugged and continued to plough into the sticky, brown sweets as they ambled along the busy path between market sellers.

  "How do you keep your figure if you eat like that?"

  I don't, she thought. Anna keeps it. Or at least, she did. She hardly ever stopped moving when she had the body. Petra liked early-morning and late-night runs. And Isla was known for her infamous crash diets and fruit-only detox days.

  The body was five feet and seven inches tall and rarely went above nine stone except when Anna or Petra increased her muscle mass, all gratefully received by the others.

  I'm going to keep it healthy, she thought suddenly. It's all mine now. I'm normally so careful with it. I must keep that up. For me now.

  She'd once borrowed one of Tanya's books, although Tanya had ben reluctant. She'd used a bookmark to keep her page without folding down any corners and she was wary of ever breaking the spine. Naturally, her stewardship of the body had been at least as respectful in general. It was a complex organism of flesh and muscle and blood and internal systems that she didn't much understand. She had always been careful to return it in good condition, even if that meant abstaining from things that might give it and her pleasure.

  Deciding to keep the body for herself terrified her in terms of the responsibility that entailed, but it opened up a doorway to unknown pleasures too.

  With an extra bounce in her step, she smiled at herself in a shop window, keenly aware of her teeth: perfect, white jewels that she should really brush now. Right now. Not for the others, but for herself, because they were her teeth, all hers, forever, and she had to respect that. Nobody was going to fix them for her.

  For a second, she felt bad for the others, but this would never have happened if they hadn't kept saying that she couldn't survive out here. One by one, or all at once, in their own ways, with a glance or a laugh or a knowing silence, they'd all condemned her ability to be in the world. Even Isla, the only one she would have considered a friend.

  With friends like these ... she thought.

  She remembered how Hilda had said that she was 'naive,' 'child-like,' and 'predictable.' If any of the others had said that she was predictable, she might have let it go, but Hilda!

  Lara had stopped polishing, though only for a second.

  Hilda had felt the interruption of course. Perhaps she had also felt the nature of Lara's thoughts during that very brief interlude. For a second, Lara had imagined setting a bundle of newspapers alight and dropping them glowing inside her cavernous belly, then leaving the lid open a crack so that air could continue to circulate.

  She'd gone on polishing, pushing the subsequent explosion into flames aside, but once given life, nothing really disappears. Everything comes back to finish what was started.

  He had his arm around her waist now. Their hips were bouncing against each other and she deliberately accentuated her walk to press against him as they moved.

  She pushed her fingers into the paper bag and found only the bottom, littered with crumbs. She licked her fingers and, seen, she apologised.

  "I like watching you eat," he said. "I like feeding you. Amazing creature that you are."

  "Then why are you staring at me like that?" she asked.

  "Because it's not just the fudge, Sarah," he said. "It's your love for life. You're getting soaked and you haven't complained once. You haven't even thought to cover your hair with a hat or scarf or a newspaper. It's like you haven't even noticed."

  "Oh, I've noticed," she said. "I like the rain. I like how it tingles on my skin."

  "I can't think of another woman who would say such a thing," he told her.

  "Shush."

  "It's true."

  "Is that a good thing?"

  "It's cold, Sarah," he said. "It's grey and it's cold, but all you see and feel is the beauty in that. Being with you ... well, it's opened my eyes too. And my heart."

  She glanced at him and then looked at her feet.

  "Oh, I know I'm a salesman, and this must sound like a line, but I assure you, it's no line. I love the way you experience the world. The way that everything is important to you. From the stream rising off those apple tarts on that stall over there to that old biddy sitting next to us at breakfast."

  "She wasn't an old biddy."

  "Well, that's my point. To you she was beautiful. Everything's beautiful. And when I'm with you, I start to see it too. It rubs off. Slowly, mind, but slowly, I'm becoming better. A better person."

  "I make you a better person?"

  "One hundred percent."

  "You do the same for me," she said.

  "You couldn't be better," Roger told her. "I married you because you're perfect."

  She felt something dislodge inside her then and it got stuck in some tube somewhere. This wasn
't one of the real internal workings by which she was increasingly fascinated, but some emotional blockage that she couldn't put a name to yet, but might have been guilt or shame or fear.

  She wanted to say something back to him now and about why she had married him, but the truth was that she'd done it because nobody would have expected it and she wanted the others to take note of her. She hadn't wanted to be predictable.

  "I love you," she said.

  He was still staring at her and it seemed rude to ask him if they could keep walking now.

  "Thank you for marrying me," he said. "I think you know that I didn't just marry you because I love you, that I need you, but I do love you too."

  "I know," she said, not understanding at all. Was this what the others had meant by naive?

  He was so earnest in that moment. She saw his eyes trembling, watering, like a fissure had opened up and he was holding back a great flood. Through the crack, she saw a part of him that he hadn't revealed before; some vulnerability, which made his caring for her that much sweeter. He would protect her, despite the harm that might befall him along the way.

  She hadn't meant to fall in love with him, but perhaps she had fallen for him now. As they continued to walk hand-in-hand, she came to realise that there was no giving him up to the others, which meant that she would have no choice but to betray them.

  Although she suspected that most of them hated her, the prospect of abandoning them was not as painless as it might sound. They were family. They were what you had when everything else fell apart. She'd be condemning them to an interminable life in confinement, a fate she wouldn't have wished on anyone if there had been another way. Perhaps she'd be able to reason with Isla, and Anna ... maybe even Petra. The others? They'd be as good as dead.

  She'd have to destroy her family to create a new one.

  "I want to have children," Lara said.

  Roger looked startled.

  Of all the things that had been forbidden to her, including putting the body in deliberate and unnecessary danger ("Define 'unnecessary'" Anna had said!), they had all agreed that they should not get the body pregnant. Those who had been pregnant in their previous lives, didn't want the experience again, and those who wanted children - Sylvia, Petra, Tanya - didn't want to share the carrying of it nor the caring for it with the others. Nobody but Petra and Olga volunteered to give birth to anyone else's child. Olga would have done it, for the right sister, but she'd remind them of it on a daily basis.

  Thus it was agreed that they should take every necessary step to avoid becoming pregnant.

  "If I'm staying, which I am ..."

  "I should hope so."

  "... I would like to have a child."

  "You've gone from children down to a child. If I keep staring at you with my mouth open, perhaps I'll bargain you down to a puppy."

  "Don't mock me, Roger. I'm serious."

  "So is this weather," he said.

  As the rain became heavier, Roger insisted that they seek shelter, which they did in a small cafe where Lara pretended to drink another coffee. She'd told him about her desire to have children; she could tell him that she detested coffee, but perhaps later rather than sooner. She didn't want to hit him with it all at once.

  Anxious, she soothed herself with a cream scone and jam and she eyed up another while waiting for Roger to come back from the men's room.

  While he was away, the man serving food made wiped his big hands on his apron and made idle chat with her. He had a childish face, she thought, with chubby cheeks and dazzlingly bright eyes, the way she had imagined the coastline would look and how it might look later if it ever stopped raining. He asked her innocent questions about where she was from and where she was going and where she was staying. She told him all about the charming guest house by the sea and he said that he knew it. When she looked surprised, he reminded her that this town wasn't all that big, that he knew everything and that it was literally his business to know such things. He said that he relied on tourism, but that that wasn't the only reason he was talking to her. He said that he had a feeling they would be seeing more of each other, that coastal towns were beautiful and that Cornwall was as a good a place as any to settle down.

  She confided that she would have liked to have been on the other side of the channel now, but that she hadn't been able to find her passport and couldn't yet face the rigmarole of getting a new one. She held back from telling him that she wanted to have children and that she'd decided, that very afternoon, while eating the scone, that she wanted to have it in France: a little French baby called Antoine, if it were a boy, and Julia, if it were a girl.

  He leaned on the table and warned her not to go adventuring for adventuring's sake. He'd lived in Cornwall all his life, because that was what he knew but also because that was what he loved.

  He told her that she had nothing to prove to anyone and that she should follow her heart.

  She hummed.

  He looked as if he might sit, when Roger returned from the bathroom and stood awkwardly beside him.

  "Let's go," he said stiffly, conspicuously ignoring the man she'd been chatting with so personably moments ago.

  "Roger, this is ... I'm sorry, I don't know your name."

  "Nor will you," interrupted Roger. "Let's go."

  He bustled her out of the cafe, giving her an excuse not to finish her tepid coffee, but deeply embarrassing all the same.

  "Why did you do that?" she asked on the step. "Roger, why? It's still raining."

  "I don't want every guy in town flirting with you whenever I turn my back," he said. "We're going to have to buy a sack to keep you in and put it over your head."

  "Don't be ridiculous," she said. "He wasn't flirting, he was friendly."

  "Isn't that what flirting is? Being friendly with strangers?"

  "No!"

  "You're a very beautiful woman, Sarah," he said. "You don't realise it, but the rest of the world sees your beauty and is attracted to it like a giant, hairy, sweaty moth to a flame."

  "I don't have much to worry about in the looks department," she admitted, "but it's hardly the beginning and end of every conversation with a man, is it?"

  "Yes, it is," he told her.

  "Even for you? You never struck me as the shallow type."

  She thought she had caught him out there, but instead he persisted.

  "You wouldn't have caught my eye if you had been plain. If you had spoken to me rather than the other way round, I'd have directed you to the Psychology section with an errant finger and continued to read my book. I'd have introduced you to a member of staff a hundred times rather than searching the shelves to find the book you wanted. You still would have been the same wonderful woman I know now, but we wouldn't have met."

  They remembered their meeting differently. She was sure that she had approached him, and it had taken some nerve to do it, but he often referred to having seen her coming, having sensed her beauty and having almost willed her to him, unable to believe it when she figuratively fell into his lap.

  Either way, it was incredible to think that her future, and the future of all her sisters, had changed as a consequence of that chance, momentary meeting in the library.

  "Well, you needn't worry," she said.

  "I had to fight for everything I've got, and I'll have to fight for you too if that exchange is anything to go by. And the looks you're getting from all and sundry." He was smiling, but she could see that his jealousy pained him.

  She glanced at the old men smiling at her as they went by. Now that Roger had mentioned it, some of them could have been said to have been leering. It wasn't as if she was in a party dress or anything. Her blouse was modest and this skirt came down to the knee, although she was wearing very pretty shoes.

  It was true that she'd often enjoyed her beauty in private, but had been embarrassed by it in public. Perhaps there was something in her step and in her eyes, something about being newly-married that had released the beauty in her that had
always been there but was now impossible to hide.

  "What men do with their eyes is not my fault," she said.

  "Perhaps not, but it's not only their eyes I'm concerned about. Let's just keep moving, shall we?"

  "Where are we going?"

  "I don't know. Away from here. Where do you want to go?"

  "Home," she said meekly. "Back to the hotel."

  "Okay," he snapped and before long he'd flagged down a taxi and was practically bundling her into the back. They'd left his car in London so that he could drink and have a truly relaxing holiday without the stress of the road. He'd confessed to being notoriously bad company during long car journeys.

  "Are you angry with me?" she asked.

  "No, he said.

  That was all they said to each other during the entire journey back to the hotel. When they arrived, she reached for the door and he said:

  "Stay here."

  She thought he was going to walk around the car and open her door for her, but instead he went directly into the guest house, alone.

  The taxi driver eyed her in the rear view mirror.

  "Just married?" he said.

  "Yes," she replied and stared at her hands, which were folded in her lap. For the first time, she felt just as she had before meeting Roger. Alone.

  She was relieved when he reappeared, although he was pulling their cases behind him, with a holdall slung over one shoulder, trotting at a fair pace. To her surprise, he went to the back of the car and the taxi driver loaded their bags into the boot.

  "Where are we going?" Lara asked.

  "I told you," she said. "This hotel is dead. We're not staying here."

  "But I like this hotel. It was nice."

  "This is our honeymoon," Roger said. "I don't want it to be nice. I want it to be memorable."

  To the driver, he said: "Drive!" and the car pulled away from the kerb.

  Roger looked back, seeming somewhat nervous, but once they were down the road, he relaxed and put his arm around her. The touch didn't comfort her. She felt as though he was laying his claim to her. She pulled away slightly, but there was no way to create distance in the back of the taxi without being obvious about it and upsetting him further.