The Last Sane Woman by Hannah Regel

Author:Hannah Regel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2024-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

‘I was trying to defend you. That there is such a thing as being crafted to death, that was what you were saying. I didn’t mean to—’

‘Of course not. Of course not. You were only making eyes at him to appease me. Only smiling, like you do. Fuck, Donna.’

Joseph is standing with his back to her and his hands on the kitchen worktop, having abruptly left the dinner table. His back that she thinks is so big and perfect, like a warm rock face, and that she wants to kiss, but is now knotted and tense and off limits. Off limits because she has failed.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, reaching for him.

What he does not do is bring the saucers back in.

Her skin is tingling from alcohol and want, it is crawling through her smaller, less significant.

You know the script.

Joseph turns to face her. He says:

‘It’s humiliating, the way you behave. That dinner was humiliating.’

‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘You never mean to do anything.’

‘You won’t even acknowledge that we’re together.’

‘I’m private.’

‘It’s killing me.’

‘It’s doing no such thing!’ he shouts, striding past her towards an open cabinet. He fills a wine glass to the brim with red. She snatches the bottle from him and does the same. Her glass, overflowing slightly. She licks the purple streak from her wrist.

On and on, round and round, until they have drunk enough to fly off again.

Something like a rind peels off her with the minute hand. The neck of her blouse is gaping open. Her mascara is smudged and long tendrils of hair have fallen from the knot she’d twisted them into. It unwinds around her: letting the smell out, exposing the flesh.

As is the way.

If thou hast the weights.

She wishes she had Susan to show off to retroactively. AN EARL. A silent audience, an envelope, a time delay, a little bit of reverence.

Instead she can barely see. Beside a bonfire the man in the shirt sidles up to her again, dragging his chair across the grass.

‘Shame about your application, I hope you don’t mind my saying,’ purring with the liberty of putting a hand on her knee. ‘I saw your stuff at Waterloo Place. If you want my opinion,’ chewed and swallowed, ‘they look as though they were dug out of the ground. Very underdeveloped. The intellectual effort is slight when it should be asserted. That is their weakness,’ turning the ice in his glass. He tops up hers as the bedrock cracks. ‘Declan Fuller, by the way,’ proffering a hand.

Soul ajar, she gets yanked open

– clap-bang,

The sediment loosens

and the soot comes back.

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