The World's Wife Read online

  He looked at me. I mean he looked at me. My God.

  His eyes were eyes to die for. Then he was gone,

  his rough men shouldering a pathway to the gates.

  The night before his trial, I dreamt of him.

  His brown hands touched me. Then it hurt.

  Then blood. I saw that each tough palm was skewered

  by a nail. I woke up, sweating, sexual, terrified.

  Leave him alone. I sent a warning note, then quickly dressed.

  When I arrived, the Nazarene was crowned with thorns.

  The crowd was baying for Barabbas. Pilate saw me,

  looked away, then carefully turned up his sleeves

  and slowly washed his useless, perfumed hands.

  They seized the prophet then and dragged him out,

  up to the Place of Skulls. My maid knows all the rest.

  Was he God? Of course not. Pilate believed he was.

  Mrs Aesop

  By Christ, he could bore for Purgatory. He was small,

  didn’t prepossess. So he tried to impress. Dead men,

  Mrs Aesop, he’d say, tell no tales. Well, let me tell you now

  that the bird in his hand shat on his sleeve,

  never mind the two worth less in the bush. Tedious.

  Going out was worst. He’d stand at our gate, look, then leap;

  scour the hedgerows for a shy mouse, the fields

  for a sly fox, the sky for one particular swallow

  that couldn’t make a summer. The jackdaw, according to him,

  envied the eagle. Donkeys would, on the whole, prefer to be lions.

  On one appalling evening stroll, we passed an old hare

  snoozing in a ditch – he stopped and made a note –

  and then, about a mile further on, a tortoise, somebody’s pet,

  creeping, slow as marriage, up the road. Slow

  but certain, Mrs Aesop, wins the race. Asshole.

  What race? What sour grapes? What silk purse,

  sow’s ear, dog in a manger, what big fish? Some days

  I could barely keep awake as the story droned on

  towards the moral of itself. Action, Mrs A., speaks louder

  than words. And that’s another thing, the sex

  was diabolical. I gave him a fable one night

  about a little cock that wouldn’t crow, a razor-sharp axe

  with a heart blacker than the pot that called the kettle.

  I’ll cut off your tail, all right, I said, to save my face.

  That shut him up. I laughed last, longest.

  Mrs Darwin

  7 April 1852.

  Went to the Zoo.

  I said to Him –

  Something about that Chimpanzee over there reminds me of you.

  Mrs Sisyphus

  That’s him pushing the stone up the hill, the jerk.

  I call it a stone – it’s nearer the size of a kirk.

  When he first started out, it just used to irk,

  but now it incenses me, and him, the absolute berk.

  I could do something vicious to him with a dirk.

  Think of the perks, he says.

  What use is a perk, I shriek,

  when you haven’t the time to pop open a cork

  or go for so much as a walk in the park?

  He’s a dork.

  Folk flock from miles around just to gawk.

  They think it’s a quirk,

  a bit of a lark.

  A load of old bollocks is nearer the mark.

  He might as well bark

  at the moon –

  that feckin’ stone’s no sooner up

  than it’s rolling back

  all the way down.

  And what does he say?

  Mustn’t shirk –

  keen as a hawk,

  lean as a shark

  Mustn’t shirk!

  But I lie alone in the dark,

  feeling like Noah’s wife did

  when he hammered away at the Ark;

  like Frau Johann Sebastian Bach.

  My voice reduced to a squawk,

  my smile to a twisted smirk;

  while, up on the deepening murk of the hill,

  he is giving one hundred per cent and more to his work.

  Mrs Faust

  First things first –

  I married Faust.

  We met as students,

  shacked up, split up,

  made up, hitched up,

  got a mortgage on a house,

  flourished academically,

  BA. MA. Ph.D. No kids.

  Two towelled bathrobes. Hers. His.

  We worked. We saved.

  We moved again.

  Fast cars. A boat with sails.

  A second home in Wales.

  The latest toys – computers,

  mobile phones. Prospered.

  Moved again. Faust’s face

  was clever, greedy, slightly mad.

  I was as bad.

  I grew to love the lifestyle,

  not the life.

  He grew to love the kudos,

  not the wife.

  He went to whores.

  I felt, not jealousy,

  but chronic irritation.

  I went to yoga, t’ai chi,

  Feng Shui, therapy, colonic irrigation.

  And Faust would boast

  at dinner parties

  of the cost

  of doing deals out East.

  Then take his lust

  to Soho in a cab,

  to say the least,

  to lay the ghost,

  get lost, meet panthers, feast.

  He wanted more.

  I came home late one winter’s evening,

  hadn’t eaten.

  Faust was upstairs in his study,

  in a meeting.

  I smelled cigar smoke,

  hellish, oddly sexy, not allowed.

  I heard Faust and the other

  laugh aloud.

  Next thing, the world,

  as Faust said,

  spread its legs.

  First politics –

  Safe seat. MP. Right Hon. KG.

  Then banks –

  offshore, abroad –

  and business –

  Vice-chairman. Chairman. Owner. Lord.

  Enough? Encore!

  Faust was Cardinal, Pope,

  knew more than God;

  flew faster than the speed of sound

  around the globe,

  lunched;

  walked on the moon,

  golfed, holed in one;

  lit a fat Havana on the sun.

  Then backed a hunch –

  invested in smart bombs,

  in harms,

  Faust dealt in arms.

  Faust got in deep, got out.

  Bought farms,

  cloned sheep,

  Faust surfed the Internet

  for like-minded Bo-Peep.

  As for me,

  I went my own sweet way,

  saw Rome in a day,

  spun gold from hay,

  had a facelift,

  had my breasts enlarged,

  my buttocks tightened;

  went to China, Thailand, Africa,

  returned, enlightened.

  Turned 40, celibate,

  teetotal, vegan,

  Buddhist, 41.

  Went blonde,

  redhead, brunette,

  went native, ape,

  berserk, bananas;

  went on the run, alone;

  went home.

  Faust was in. A word, he said,

  I spent the night being pleasured

  by a virtual Helen of Troy.

  Face that launched a thousand ships.

  I kissed its lips.

  Thing is –

  I’ve made a pact

  with Mephistopheles,

  the Devil’s boy.

  He’s on his way

  to take away

/>   what’s owed,

  reap what I sowed.

  For all these years of

  gagging for it,

  going for it,

  rolling in it,

  I’ve sold my soul.

  At this, I heard

  a serpent’s hiss,

  tasted evil, knew its smell,

  as scaly devil hands

  poked up

  right through the terracotta Tuscan tiles

  at Faust’s bare feet

  and dragged him, oddly smirking, there and then

  straight down to Hell.

  Oh, well.

  Faust’s will

  left everything –

  the yacht,

  the several homes,

  the Lear jet, the helipad,

  the loot, et cet, et cet,

  the lot –

  to me.

  C’est la vie.

  When I got ill,

  it hurt like hell.

  I bought a kidney

  with my credit card,

  then I got well.

  I keep Faust’s secret still –

  the clever, cunning, callous bastard

  didn’t have a soul to sell.

  Delilah

  Teach me, he said –

  we were lying in bed –

  how to care.

  I nibbled the purse of his ear.

  What do you mean? Tell me more.

  He sat up and reached for his beer.

  I can rip out the roar

  from the throat of a tiger,

  or gargle with fire,

  or sleep one whole night in the Minotaur’s lair,

  or flay the bellowing fur

  from a bear,

  all for a dare.

  There’s nothing I fear.

  Put your hand here –

  he guided my fingers over the scar

  over his heart,

  a four-medal wound from the war –

  but I cannot be gentle, or loving, or tender.

  I have to be strong.

  What is the cure?

  He fucked me again

  until he was sore,

  then we both took a shower.

  Then he lay with his head on my lap

  for a darkening hour;

  his voice, for a change, a soft burr

  I could just about hear.

  And, yes, I was sure

  that he wanted to change,

  my warrior.

  I was there.

  So when I felt him soften and sleep,

  when he started, as usual, to snore,

  I let him slip and slide and sprawl, handsome and huge,

  on the floor.

  And before I fetched and sharpened my scissors –

  snipping first at the black and biblical air –

  I fastened the chain to the door.

  That’s the how and the why and the where.

  Then with deliberate, passionate hands

  I cut every lock of his hair.

  Anne Hathaway

  ‘Item I gyve unto my wief my second best bed . . .’

  (from Shakespeare’s will)

  The bed we loved in was a spinning world

  of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas

  where he would dive for pearls. My lover’s words

  were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses

  on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme

  to his, now echo, assonance; his touch

  a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.

  Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the bed

  a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance

  and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.

  In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,

  dribbling their prose. My living laughing love –

  I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head

  as he held me upon that next best bed.

  Queen Kong

  I remember peeping in at his skyscraper room

  and seeing him fast asleep. My little man.

  I’d been in Manhattan a week,

  making my plans; staying at 2 quiet hotels

  in the Village, where people were used to strangers

  and more or less left you alone. To this day

  I’m especially fond of pastrami on rye.

  I digress. As you see, this island’s a paradise.

  He’d arrived, my man, with a documentary team

  to make a film. (There’s a particular toad

  that lays its eggs only here.) I found him alone

  in a clearing, scooped him up in my palm,

  and held his wriggling, shouting life till he calmed.

  For me, it was absolutely love at first sight.

  I’d been so lonely. Long nights in the heat

  of my own pelt, rumbling an animal blues.

  All right, he was small, but perfectly formed

  and gorgeous. There were things he could do

  for me with the sweet finesse of those hands

  that no gorilla could. I swore in my huge heart

  to follow him then to the ends of the earth.

  For he wouldn’t stay here. He was nervous.

  I’d go to his camp each night at dusk,

  crouch by the delicate tents, and wait. His colleagues

  always sent him out pretty quick. He’d climb

  into my open hand, sit down; and then I’d gently pick

  at his shirt and his trews, peel him, put

  the tip of my tongue to the grape of his flesh.

  Bliss. But when he’d finished his prize-winning film,

  he packed his case; hopped up and down

  on my heartline, miming the flight back home

  to New York. Big metal bird. Didn’t he know

  I could swat his plane from these skies like a gnat?

  But I let him go, my man. I watched him fly

  into the sun as I thumped at my breast, distraught.

  I lasted a month. I slept for a week,

  then woke to binge for a fortnight. I didn’t wash.

  The parrots clacked their migraine chant.

  The swinging monkeys whinged. Fevered, I drank

  handfuls of river right by the spot where he’d bathed.

  I bled when a fat, red moon rolled on the jungle roof.

  And after that, I decided to get him back.

  So I came to sail up the Hudson one June night,

  with the New York skyline a concrete rainforest

  of light; and felt, lovesick and vast, the first

  glimmer of hope in weeks. I was discreet, prowled

  those streets in darkness, pressing my passionate eye

  to a thousand windows, each with its modest peep-show

  of boredom or pain, of drama, consolation, remorse.

  I found him, of course. At 3 a.m. on a Sunday,

  dreaming alone in his single bed; over his lovely head

  a blown-up photograph of myself. I stared for a long time

  till my big brown eyes grew moist; then I padded away

  through Central Park, under the stars. He was mine.

  Next day, I shopped. Clothes for my man, mainly,

  but one or two treats for myself from Bloomingdale’s.

  I picked him, like a chocolate from the top layer

  of a box, one Friday night, out of his room

  and let him dangle in the air betwen my finger

  and my thumb in a teasing, lover’s way. Then we sat

  on the tip of the Empire State Building, saying farewell

  to the Brooklyn Bridge, to the winking yellow cabs,

  to the helicopters over the river, dragonflies.

  Twelve happy years. He slept in my fur, woke early

  to massage the heavy lids of my eyes. I liked that.

  He liked me to gently blow on him; or scratch,

  with care, the length of his back with my nail.

  Then
I’d ask him to play on the wooden pipes he’d made

  in our first year. He’d sit, cross-legged, near my ear

  for hours: his plaintive, lost tunes making me cry.

  When he died, I held him all night, shaking him

  like a doll, licking his face, breast, soles of his feet,

  his little rod. But then, heartsore as I was, I set to work.

  He would be pleased. I wear him now about my neck,

  perfect, preserved, with tiny emeralds for eyes. No man

  has been loved more. I’m sure that, sometimes, in his silent death,

  against my massive, breathing lungs, he hears me roar.

  Mrs Quasimodo

  I’d loved them fervently since childhood.

  Their generous bronze throats

  gargling, or chanting slowly, calming me –

  the village runt, name-called, stunted, lame, hare-lipped;

  but bearing up, despite it all, sweet-tempered, good at needlework;

  an ugly cliché in a field

  pressing dock-leaves to her fat, stung calves

  and listening to the five cool bells of evensong.

  I believed that they could even make it rain.

  The city suited me; my lumpy shadow

  lurching on its jagged alley walls;

  my small eyes black

  as rained-on cobblestones.

  I frightened cats.

  I lived alone up seven flights,

  boiled potatoes on a ring

  and fried a single silver fish;

  then stared across the grey lead roofs

  as dusk’s blue rubber rubbed them out,

  and then the bells began.

  I climbed the belltower steps,

  out of breath and sweating anxiously, puce-faced,

  and found the campanologists beneath their ropes.

  They made a space for me,

  telling their names,

  and when it came to him

  I felt a thump of confidence,

  a recognition like a struck match in my head.

  It was Christmas time.

  When the others left,

  he fucked me underneath the gaping, stricken bells

  until I wept.

  We wed.

  He swung an epithalamium for me,

  embossed it on the fragrant air.

  Long, sexy chimes,

  exuberant peals,

  slow scales trailing up and down the smaller bells,

  an angelus.

  We had no honeymoon

  but spent the week in bed.

  And did I kiss

  each part of him –

  that horseshoe mouth,

  that tetrahedron nose,

  that squint left eye,

  that right eye with its pirate wart,

  the salty leather of that pig’s hide throat,

  and give his cock

  a private name –

  or not?

  So more fool me.