Heading Inland. Nicola Barker
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She zipped up.
Martha went shopping again. She shopped sloppily at first, indiscriminately, in newsagents, clothes shops, hardware stores, chemists. She picked up what she could and concealed it in her belly.
The foetus grew disillusioned. He re-opened negotiations with his social worker. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know something about the World-Soul which I’m willing to divulge to my earth-parent Martha if you don’t abort me straight away.’
‘You’re too big now,’ the social worker said, fingering his letter of acceptance to the Rotary Club which preambled World-Soul membership. ‘And anyway, it strikes me that Martha isn’t much interested in what you have to say.’
‘Do you honestly believe,’ the foetus asked, ‘that any woman on earth in her right mind would consider a natural birth if she knew that she could simply unzip?’
The social worker replied coldly: ‘Women are not kangaroos, you cheeky little foetus. If the World Soul has chosen to keep the zipper quiet then it will have had the best of reasons for doing so.’
‘But if babies were unzipped and taken out when they’re ready,’ the foetus continued, ‘then there would be no trauma, no memory loss. Fear of death would be a thing of the past. We could eradicate the misconception of a Vengeful God.’
‘And all the world would go to hell,’ the social worker said.
‘How can you say that?’
The foetus waited for a reply, but none came.
Martha eventually sorted out her priorities. She shopped in Harrods and Selfridges and Liberty’s. She became adept at slotting things of all conceivable shapes and sizes into her belly. Unfortunately, the foetus himself was growing quite large. After being unable to fit in a spice rack, Martha unzipped and addressed him directly. ‘Is there any possibility,’ she asked, ‘that I might be able to take you out prematurely so that there’d be more room in there?’
The foetus stared back smugly. ‘I’ll come out,’ he said firmly, ‘when I’m good and ready.’
Before she could zip up, he added, ‘And when I do come out, I’m going to give you the longest and most painful labour in Real-Life history. I’m going to come out sideways, doing the can-can.’
Martha’s hand paused, momentarily, above the zipper. ‘Promise to come out very quickly,’ she said, ‘and I’ll nick you some baby clothes.’
The foetus snorted in a derisory fashion. ‘Revolutionaries,’ he said, ‘don’t wear baby clothes. Steal me a gun, though, and I’ll fire it through your spleen.’
Martha zipped up quickly, shocked at this vindictive little bundle of vituperation she was unfortunate enough to be carrying. She smoked an entire packet of Marlboro in one sitting, and smirked, when she unzipped, just slightly, at the coughing which emerged.
The foetus decided that he had no option but to rely on his own natural wit and guile to foil both his mother and the forces of the After-Life. He began to secrete various items that Martha stole in private little nooks and crannies about her anatomy.
On the last night of his thirty-sixth week, he put his plan into action. In his arsenal: an indelible pen, a potato, a large piece of cotton from the hem of a dress, a thin piece of wire from the supports of a bra, all craftily reassembled. In the dead of night, while Martha was snoring, he gradually worked the zip open from the inside, and did what he had to do.
The following morning, blissfully unaware of the previous night’s activities, Martha went out shopping to Marks and Spencer’s. She picked up some Belgian chocolates and a bottle of port, took hold of her zipper and tried to open her belly. It wouldn’t open. The zipper seemed smaller and more difficult to hold.
‘That bastard,’ she muttered, ‘must be jamming it up from the inside.’ She put down her booty and headed for the exit. On her way out of the shop, she set off the alarms.
‘For Chrissakes!’ she told the detective, ‘I’ve got nothing on me!’ And for once, she meant it.
Back home, Martha attacked her belly with a pair of nail scissors. But the zip wasn’t merely jammed, it was meshing and merging and disappearing, fading like the tail end of a bruise. She was frazzled. She looked around for her cigarettes. She found her packet and opened it. The last couple had gone, and instead, inside, was a note.
Martha, [the note said] I have made good my escape, fully intact. I sewed a pillow into your belly. On the wall of your womb I’ve etched and inked an indelible bar-code. Thanks for the fags.
Love, Baby.
‘But you can’t do that!’ Martha yelled. ‘You don’t have the technology!’ She thought she heard a chuckle, behind her. She span around. On the floor, under the table, she saw a small lump of afterbirth, tied up into a neat parcel by an umbilical cord. She could smell a whiff of cigarette smoke. She thought she heard laughter, outside the door, down the hall. She listened intently, but heard nothing more.
G-String
Ever fallen out with somebody simply because they agreed with you? Well, this is exactly what happened to Gillian and her pudgy but reliable long-term date, Mr Kip.
They lived separately in Canvey Island. Mr Kip ran a small but flourishing insurance business there. Gillian worked for a car-hire firm in Grays Thurrock. She commuted daily.
Mr Kip – he liked to be called that, an affectation, if you will – was an ardent admirer of the great actress Katharine Hepburn. She was skinny and she was elegant and she was sparky and she was intelligent. Everything a girl should be. She was old now, too, Gillian couldn’t help thinking, but naturally she didn’t want to appear a spoilsport so she kept her lips sealed.
Gillian was thirty-four, a nervous size sixteen, had no cheekbones to speak of and hair which she tried to perm. God knows she tried. She was the goddess of frizz. She frizzed but she did not fizz. She was not fizzy like Katharine. At least, that’s what Mr Kip told her.
Bloody typical, isn’t it? When a man chooses to date a woman, long term, who resembles his purported heroine in no way whatsoever? Is it safe? Is it cruel? Is it downright simple-minded?
Gillian did her weekly shopping in Southend. They had everything you needed there. Of course there was the odd exception: fishing tackle, seaside mementos, insurance, underwear. These items she never failed to purchase in Canvey Island itself, just to support local industry.
A big night out was on the cards. Mr Kip kept telling her how big it would be. A local Rotary Club do, and Gillian was to be Mr Kip’s special partner, he was to escort her, in style. He was even taking the cloth off his beloved old Aston Martin for the night to drive them there and back. And he’d never deigned to do that before. Previously he’d only ever taken her places in his H-reg Citroën BX.
Mr Kip told Gillian that she was to buy a new frock for this special occasion. Something, he imagined, like that glorious dress Katharine Hepburn wore during the bar scene in her triumph, Bringing Up Baby.
Dutifully, Gillian bought an expensive dress in white chiffon which didn’t at all suit her. Jeanie – twenty-one with doe eyes, sunbed-brown and weighing in at ninety pounds – told Gillian that the dress made her look like an egg-box. All lumpyhumpy. It was her underwear, Jeanie informed her – If only! Gillian thought – apparently it was much too visible under the dress’s thin fabric. Jeanie and Gillian were conferring in The Lace Bouquet, the lingerie shop on Canvey High Street where Jeanie worked.
‘I tell you what,’ Jeanie offered, ‘all in one lace bodysuit, right? Stretchy stuff. No bra. No knickers. It’ll hold you in an’ everything.’ Jeanie held up the prospective item. Bodysuits, Gillian just knew, would not be Mr Kip’s idea of sophisticated. She shook her head. She looked down at her breasts. ‘I think I’ll need proper support,’ she said, grimacing.
Jeanie screwed