Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson Read Free Book Online

it,’ she said, pushing me away. ‘I have to go home.’
    ‘It must be seven o’clock. That’s your home-time isn’t it? That’s why you used to leave the practice early so that you could get a quick fuck for an hour and a half and then smooth yourself down to say, “Hello darling,” and cook dinner.’
    ‘You let me come,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, I did, when you were bleeding, when you were sick, again and again I made you come.’
    ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant we did it together. You wanted me there.’
    ‘I wanted you everywhere and the pathetic thing is I still do.’
    She looked at me. ‘Drive me home will you?’
    I still remember that night with shame and rage. I didn’tdrive her home. I walked with her through the dark lanes to her house hearing the swish of her trenchcoat and the rub of her briefcase against her calf. Like Dirk Bogarde she prided herself on her profile and it was lit to suitable effect under the dull streetlights. I left her where I knew she’d be safe and listened to the click of her heels dying away. After a few seconds they stopped. I was familiar with this; she was checking her hair and her face, dusting me from coat and loins. The gate squeaked and closed metal on metal. They were inside now, four-square, everything shared, even the disease.
    As I walked home, breathing deeply, knowing that I was shaking and not knowing how to stop it, I thought, I’m as guilty as her. Hadn’t I let it happen, colluded with the deceit and let all my pride be burnt away? I was nothing, a weak piece of shit, I deserved Bathsheba. Self-respect. They’re supposed to teach you that in the Army. Perhaps I should enlist. Would it recommend me though, to write Broken Heart under Personal Interests?
    At the Clap Clinic the following day, I looked at my fellow sufferers. Shifty Jack-the-lads, fat businessmen in suits cut to hide the bulge. A few women, tarts yes, and other women too. Women with eyes full of pain and fear. What was this place and why had nobody told them? ‘Who gave it to you love?’ I wanted to say to one middle-aged woman in a floral print. She kept staring at the posters about gonorrhoea and then trying to concentrate on her copy of Country Life . ‘Divorce him,’ I wanted to say. ‘You think this is the first time?’ Her name was called and she disappeared into a bleak white room. This place is like the ante-chamber to Judgement Day. A pot of stale Cona coffee, a few scruffy leatherette benches, plastic flowers in a plastic vase and all over the walls, top to bottom,posters for every genital wart and discoloured emission. It’s impressive what a few inches of flesh can catch.
    Ah, Bathsheba, it’s not the same as your elegant surgery is it? There your private patients can have their teeth removed to Vivaldi and enjoy twenty minutes’ rest on a reclining sofa. Your flowers are delivered fresh every day and you serve only the most aromatic herbal teas. Against your white coat, their heads on your breast, no-one fears the needle and syringe. I came to you for a crown and you offered me a kingdom. Unfortunately I could only take possession between five and seven, weekdays, and the odd weekend when he was away playing football.
    My name was called.
    ‘Have I got it?’
    The nurse looked at me the way you do a flat tyre and said, ‘No.’
    Then she started filling out a form and told me to come back in three months.
    ‘What for?’
    ‘Sexually transmitted diseases are not normally an isolated problem. If your habits are such that you have caught it once it’s likely that you will catch it again.’ She paused. ‘We are creatures of habit.’
    ‘I haven’t caught it, any of it.’
    She opened the door. ‘Three months will be sufficient.’
    Sufficient for what? I walked down the corridor past SURGERY and MOTHER AND BABY and OUTPATIENTS THIS WAY . It’s a feature of the Clap Clinic that it’s situated well out of the way of proper deserving patients. Its labyrinthian