Desire's Grief

Loss is not lost, rather it is an absence, a lack, a grief of indeterminable capacity and quantity. Desire only remains if it is not sated. Once desire is met, achieves its fruition, it can no longer want. How can you want for something that you already have?

Mother said “If you don't get married in white it will kill your father”. Do you know how many men have been inside me mother? Have you any idea of the cocks that have passed between my lips mother? I acquiesced and tried on wedding dresses for two whole days. Big ones, small ones, fussy ones, plain ones. It was as if she thought taffeta could cleanse me. It was as if she thought I did not want father dead.

I thought it ironic. I did not know what irony was. I doubt I could have articulated it. Irony was a mature thing. Irony knew how to apply eye-liner in the French fashion. Irony understood less was more. Irony did not lose her temper and strain to prevent herself from lying face down on the floor, while kicking her legs and screaming.

Of course, I did not tell him. He helped choose the wedding menu (steak). He agreed to the arrangements (I would stay at my parents' house the night before). He understood why it was appropriate that we have two, entirely separate receptions.

In my sister's bed, waiting for sleep to steal me, I asked her “What's the secret of a happy marriage?”
She said, “Good sex”.
Pause.
“And don't ever back him into a corner.”
Pause.
“And you'll have to forgive him more than he'll ever forgive you.”
Stop.

The next morning, dry because he had not left his love inside me, I ate chocolate yoghurt while staring in the mirror at myself. It was framed in white wood, carved into intricate curlings, stroked with gold detail. I looked at my face. Eyes clear. Skin unblemished. Lips slightly colourless. Mother appeared beside me. “I made this for you.” I took it from her. The fabric felt like cloudy promises, like when you don't know whether it is going to rain or not. “I sewed each bead on by hand.” It was beautiful. She reached up and put it on my head, obscuring my white-blonde mohawk. I had a bowl in one hand, a spoon in the other, and I was wearing a t-shirt and men's chequered boxer shorts. The cotton on my body hung slack, well used. The silk on my head made a contrary statement. Mother was crying. On the outside tears came out of her. I was crying. Dry eyed I looked at my reflection.

Family arrived. I was duly congratulated. Uncle Frank was there in his grey pinstripe, and Aunty Maisie, in her permanent grief, since Gerald slit his wrists and died in some far away bath. She could not save him. I missed him. He was conspicuous by his absence.

Tommy decorated the car, in white ribbons and balloons. When we drove to the registry office people stopped and waved. I signalled in return, like a queen. For one day, in one moment, while they looked at me, I saw hope in their eyes. 'Another fool, willing to make the leap of faith, perhaps we're not all stupid'. The bride being driven to her future. Blind faith in the face of hopeless defeat. They saw me, and I saw them, wishing and wanting that everything, always, could, forever, be alright.

When I arrived he cried. He stood there, in his second-hand suit and his Route 66 shoes, and he cried. I must have been a vision. He then borrowed the requisite amount of money from his brother to pay for the ceremony.

After it was over, when I turned around and looked at the guests, I saw mother, something falling out of her eyes and running down her cheeks. It was not liquid joy, flowing unchecked, it was pain. Her brow was crinkled. Globules of everything she had missed in her own life slid across her face, magnifying what was underneath them. I saw her creases, ironed in. I saw that she was wet washing in the rain, and that no-one had taken her inside. She wished for better, for me, for her, but somewhere, deep, the truth of the reality burned her. She had to cry. It was the only chance she had to extinguish the flames. I gave her a handkerchief. I had nothing else tucked into my garter or soul.

The reception was a disaster. Mother, anxious to avoid any connotation of introspection, did what the best of us do, she found that the best form of defence was attack. “When are you going to get a job?” she snarled at my new husband.
He faced her, not knowing her, and hated her.

Speeches came and went. Aunty Margaret got drunk, but Aunty Margaret always got drunk, no matter what the occasion. Matt's brother, as best made, made a few embarrassed stutters. Everyone 'Awwwwwwwwwwed' at his ridiculous attempts at humour. I felt pale in my sincerity, transparently transigent.

Glasses were raised, cakes were cut, presents were opened. After a while the scowled squabblings became more audible and difficult. What is a family reunion if not an excuse to drag all the skeletons out of the cupboard? People were flinging doors open all over the place.

“At Paulette's wedding father had sex with someone in the backgarden,” Rosie said.
“I don't want to know,” I replied, “I was only three. Why do you tell me these things?”
“You need to understand what sort of man he is.”
“Now? I need to understand that now?” Her husband guided her away from me, which was just as well, otherwise I would have ripped the wig from her super orthadox, tight arsed head and rammed it down her fucking throat.

Matt seemed to take it all in good humour, until later that night, when the dogs who were living with us ate all the remaining wedding cake and shat all over the house. The traditional punch up ensued, together with the obligatory police attendance and all round frayed tempers. I sat in a crumpled heap in the lounge, crying, watching the blood trickle down the door, where Wozzi's nose had connected with the clean, white paintwork. The following day Matt's father apologised and gave me a potted tea rose.

The marriage was duly consummated and the pregnancy test proved positive. I was happy. I wanted a baby. I was curiously unperturbed by my new husband's impending prison sentence. As soon as the pregnancy was confirmed I found myself with my head in the toilet. From the moment I opened my eyes in the morning until I shut them at night I was nauseous. I wanted to vomit. I suspected this might bring some form of relief. I retched for hours.

I spent day after day lying on the sofa, under a baby blue honeycomb blanket. I felt useless, limp and utterly exhausted. I had expected a joy at the growing realisation of our baby. Instead, a sense of illness and dependency dogged my waking hours.

Occasionally we went out, to meetings or Court. Because Matt had committed the crime in London he had to be tried in London. Unfortunately, we lived some 200 miles away. We travelled by coach, as it was cheaper. Backwards and forwards, once a month, for pointless adjournments. The prosecution kept changing the charge. It went from a relatively minor 'affray', right up to 'attempted murder' and 'incitement to riot' at one point, both of which carry a potential life sentence.

Worry gnawed at me constantly, like grit in my eye. I realised I had not thought things through. My husband may well go to prison for a very long time, and I had his baby in me. Yes, I had somewhere to live. The state would support me, once it had made a single parent of me. But what of our relationship. How would the child know its father?

Often we stayed with friends in London, before or after the hearings. One one such occasion, when sleeping at Sam and Dave's we were awoken at 3.00am by a wild eyed Dave. He had knocked ever so lightly on the door, then opened it a crack and peaked round the corner. I lifted myself onto my elbow, surprised at the sudden invasion of light from the hall lamp. He crept in and sat down on the end of the bed.

“We're at war.”
Matt woke up. “What?”
“We're at war with Iraq?”
“Now?”
“It's on the news.”

We went through to the lounge and slumped on the sofa. Watching the rockets and bombs, courtesy of satellite imaging, was like looking at a black and white firework night. There was nothing to say. We were at war. We could not understand exactly how that had happened.

The day of the final trial arrived. Matt had elected to plead self-defence, saying that he had only attacked the police because he, and the demonstration he had been on, were attacked first. There is something to the argument that the best form of defence is attack. He was well represented and had many good witnesses to speak up for him and confirm his version of events. The jury was having none of it though, and found him unanimously guilty.

We retired for lunch, while the judge considered the sentence. Although it had occurred to me that there would be a point of separation, it did not entirely land in my fuzzy head that this meant Matt would not be there. He was always so present. Now, he was in the cells.

They dragged him back out. We all stood for the judge's arrival in Court. I did not. We did not include me. I was six months pregnant, tired, emotional and feeling very stubborn. If the judge wanted to force me onto my feet he would have to get a Court official to literally pull me off my seat.

“In light of blah blah blah and the severity of blah blah blah and the erroneous representations you've made to this Court blah blah blah I find I have no alternative blah blah blah.”

When he said two and a half years I saw Matt visibly buckle and realised that, through this who performance, he had never, not once, shown any fear, until now. His face softened. His resolve dented, only slightly, like a shoulder taking the recoil from a rifle. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and called the guard to his side. The guard nodded and then approached me. Matt had passed his lighter, the one I had always really liked, across. I looked at it. Brushed steel. It felt heavy in my palm. Of course I would take care of it. Within a week I had lost it.

They led him down into the cells and then off to god knows where.

My friend took my arm and escorted me from the building. Inside, my head and my guts, a big hole had opened up. It did not have any colour, or texture, rather it was just a blank space that was producing blank thoughts, or perhaps it was swallowing all my other thoughts, gulping them down like a dog does with cheese.

We were in an underground station, travelling on the escalators towards the train platforms. I locked my knees to stop my legs from shaking. All those people, coming the other way, going up and out into the sunshine, all busy busy. They did not know what had just happened to me, or my husband, or my baby, or, for that matter, British justice. They were blissfully unaware. Probably some of them were thinking about their dinner, or that girl that they fancy in accounts, maybe whether they should wear the brown boots or the black court shoes to go out that night. Matt wouldn't be thinking these things. He would be sitting in a cell, on his own, frightened, lonely and wondering what was going to happen next.

I decided then and there that they might have him but they were not going to take me. They could have his body, for a while, but as long as I maintained my vigil on the outside then they would never have his mind. They could not steal anything from us. Sure, they could stick a spanner in the works, for a while, but it would only be a phase. They were trying to break us, discipline the revolution out of him, punish him for not being a good boy and letting the riot cops smash a demonstration off the streets. Well, 'Fuck 'em,' I thought, 'With their mighty Courts, their boot boys pigs and their unholy fucking wars. They could go screw themselves. Cos we've got something they'll never have. We've got love'.

The baby was kicking about inside me, almost like she was saying 'Go on Mom, give 'em hell'. I rubbed my hand over my belly, until I found her rounded rump. 'My baby. Our baby.'

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