Part 2

Tarianna lived in her circular room now. She had a window that looked over the sea. It couldn’t be opened by Tarianna. It has stone walls that ran round and round. On the wall above her iron cot hung a rug that her mother had made for her. All of the other girls in all of the other towers had their rugs made by their sisters, taught by their mothers, rugs upon rugs, covering the walls, the floors, the ceilings. It was forbidden to depict women, so the rugs showed men: men walking, fishing, sailing, farming, learning, reading, and – most popularly – turning metal into gold. They showed animals and plants and the sun and the moon and – most popularly – the sea. Tarianna had just one, a rug her mother made her showing a man standing in a field of the yellowest wheat. Tarianna had no sisters, had no brothers. She was an only child. Her mother cried for five days and five nights with relief when Tarianna was not an ugly girl. Her mother cried for a further five days and five nights when Tarianna started getting older, her hair golder, her face prettier. At 13, when Tarianna awoke in her bed at home with sticky brown mess on her sheets and the inside of her legs, her mother cried for a final five days and five nights. Tarianna was not just pretty, she was the prettiest girl in the Top. Her hair, waist-length and thick and as gold as her father’s wheat, made her mother cry for one of the days, her eyes, another, her lips, one more, her pretty little nose, yet another, and her figure, her perfectly proportioned figure (long legs, straight back, slender bones) the final day and night. Tarianna was perfect. Tarianna was her father’s only livelihood, with no more daughters to rely upon and no sons to marry well and keep the farm. Her beauty could secure her the best suitor with the strongest arms and the broadest back and the eyes that smiled the most, and her mother cried for five days and five nights that, thankfully, the prettiness of all the daughters she should have had (for it was not her that couldn’t have children, her husband – the wheat farmer – never waited until he was inside her before he came) was concentrated in the slender bones and the golden hair of one girl. One girl in one room in one tower.

Tarianna lived in her circular room now. As well as her iron bed, her cuffs, her harp and her mother’s rug, she had a bedpan, a wash basin, a pair of heavy curtains, a wardrobe full of heavy dresses and heavy shoes and heavy hats, a rocking chair in which she was able to sit and think, and in which visitors sat, and a door without a key. Only her visitors, her mother and Tutorette M, had a key. It was a heavy door, and it closed with a heavy thud and left the air in the room heavy. Even the harp sounded heavy in a circular room made of heavy stone filled with heavy things. Tarianna felt heavy.

At the age of 18, her mother came to visit and to change the bedpan and to uncuff Tarianna from her iron cot. Her mother looked heavy, heavy with clothing and with fat and with sadness.

“Tarianna, a suitor came over the sea for you.”

Tarianna felt an electric jump in the bottom of her stomach. A suitor came over the sea for her. A suitor. She imagined him golden haired and golden clothed, standing like an angel or a hero in a field of golden wheat, like the man in the rug above her bed that walked her dreams at night. A suitor that would save her from a life in a circular room and a life chained to a bed. A new life with a suitor in a square room, tied to a bed, with daughters and food and the weaving of new rugs.

“Tarianna, your suitor died.”

–

In the town at the Top, the law is as follows:

At birth, a female is betrothed to a male offspring of a neighbour, after all appropriate lineage checks are undertaken by clerk assigned to said neighbourhood. If lineage checks are suitable, female and male are legally betrothed.

When young female comes of age, she is installed in her adolescent holding room until her training for womanhood is complete, and she has learnt all necessary tools for being a successful wife and daughter-bearer, inc. some but not all of these skills: music, craft, art (watercolour not oil, domestic scenes not history), calligraphy, song, beauty (the proper and virtuous application of make up, clothing, hair design, footwear, appropriate dress for appropriate occasion), poise, dance, etiquette.

During adolescent training, the male remains situated in the town at the Top, and undergoes similar vocational and practical training administered by his father and/or appropriate male members of the town establishment, depending on proposed career and by law including basic male training including personal fitness, strength, building and sailing. When this is complete, he sails along the Top Shore from Bay A to Bay B (the bay situated nearest to the adolescent holding room site) and becomes an official suitor. He may then make a formal plea to the mother of the female, and the window of the holding room will be opened, enabling official suitor to enter the room and end terms of initial betrothal.

By law, the female adolescent is not to be informed of these details, whereas the male adolescent is to be minutely briefed and required to sign a copy of the betrothal contract and appropriate legal documents at age 18.

If either betrothed dies before betrothal is complete, the remaining surviving partner must be assigned to a new betrothed (can include spare offspring – same or different family depending on lineage checks – widowed betrothed, widowed married) as soon as possible, following appropriate lineage checks. If no new betrothed is to be found, remaining surviving partner must be considered for new career. If no new career is to be found, remaining surviving partner must be considered for exile.

The terms in this document are official and legally binding.

Signed,

The Chief of the Top

X

–

The Chief was not a lawyer. He was not even a politician. He didn’t seem to realise only doctors and apprentices of doctors and those who remembered before could read. He didn’t seem to realise that his pages and pages of ‘legal binding contract documents’ written in words he thought contracts were written in, with phrases he thought lawyers would use, with a quill pen he felt like a lawyer using, were read by no-one except himself and the men he kept around him in his mansion laboratory, nodding head yes men who had to remind him to wash and eat and dress. The Chief didn’t realise anything aside from the fact he didn’t believe turning metal into gold was possible, he knew it. With a brain addled through long exposure to mercury, it is amazing his invented rules and traditions and laws managed to pass into society at the Top. But pass they did, and the people obeyed. Tarianna’s suitor had died, and her parents needed to find her a new one as soon as possible. The only alternative career for a single woman of 18 was at the Bottom.

PART 1

I always wondered if when a dog starts running beside me, it’ll confuse me for its owner and think I’m taking it for a walk. I always wonder that if it ever did, how long it’d be until it realised who I am. How long until it loved me too?

I wanted a house with a kitchen, just so I could have hung waxed leaves up over the doorway in autumn, and have a bowl of fruit that looks waxed but isn’t. Oranges and lemons in summer, even though they’ll be brought from the warmer towns across the sea and cost so much.

My name is Mima and I live at the Bottom.

–

Tarianna looks through the harp. The world behind is split open, behind bars. And she, Tarianna, sits looking in at the world. The world looks out at Tarianna.

“Again, please.” Her tutorette sits behind her, a solemn little face looking out of vast swathes of black robe. Two tiny white hands sit primly on her knee, crossed, immovable. To think they once played across a harp on a stage, for money (endless amounts of money, she had a car once. A car! A car and a big bed with navy blue sheets and a man who loved her and the way her hands played across a harp, across a body), was impossible. They had always sat on her knee, immovable. Tutorette M was old.

Tarianna did as she was bid, and played again. She played over and over, until she didn’t stop at the end but went straight back to the start without missing a beat, after one deep breath she started again and did so all afternoon, over and over. Tutorette M didn’t move, her hands didn’t move, her face didn’t move. Her face couldn’t move, really. It was too smooth now. Her hands showed how old she really was. It was a shame Tarianna had no love of music. M could see she had no passion, no talent. M’s eyes moved around the room in her taut little eyelids. She was hot in this cloak, hot and uncomfortable and bored. Her faced showed no emotion. It was too smooth now.

Tarianna played the harp whilst Tutorette M fell asleep with her eyes open, and dreamt of her husband when he was twenty six.

At night Tarianna slept with her hands handcuffed to the side of the cot. All unmarried women sleep this way, they said. Each hand was cuffed to each side, and Tarianna lay on her back. They all sleep like this, it’s for the posture, they said, it’s so your back grows straight and your legs grow long. Each night the women and the girls would come and cuff her in and put a hot brick at the end of her bed, to keep her feet warm in the tower. All unmarried women sleep in their towers, they said. The whole cliff was lined with towers, looking out over the sea and the rocky beaches and the empty air, full of their unmarried women. A line of towers like lighthouses, bringing men from overseas following their instincts, over rocky beaches and empty air to the lighthouses of unmarried women, sleeping happily chained in their warm cots. Beautiful women, because ugly girls had a lot of different accidents. Some fell down stairs they weren’t even allowed to walk, some drowned in the sea they weren’t even allowed to swim, some disappeared, some threw away their virtue and went to live at the Bottom. Girls in towers growing like flowers. If a family started building themselves a tower, the father held a feast in the foundations. Each tower should be ready by the time the girl first bleeds. She lies on her cot listening to the sea with her hands cuffed to the sides.

–

I am an ugly girl. My father decided this when I was 14. He decided that, although it is prudent and wise to be patient with a daughter, my nose is too big and my nose will forever be too big. He said that, although it is definitely more fruitful to wait for your daughter to blossom, he had waited long enough for me and he knew, although it is not humble to suggest he always knew, that I would never be pretty. The tower was done and waiting for me, and he said, although it is vain to say he is bothered by the judgments of others, that instead of taking it down as he was supposed to, he’d keep it and give it to my sister, whose nose is small and pretty. After all, being careful with money is akin to being careful with virtue, and virtue is what we all strive for, isn’t it?

So this is who I am. I am an ugly girl. They could die, or move to the Bottom. I was 14, and scared of death. Surely death would be as unkind to an ugly girl as life was. So I walked to the Bottom, by myself, and never saw my father again. Apparently my sister got the tower, and everyone has forgotten my father – my prudent, wise, fruitful, humble, careful father – broke the rules and gave one girl’s tower to another. They forgot me entirely.

My name is Mima.

A lot of people who chose to live in the Bottom, or ended up living in the Bottom, or were sent to live in the Bottom, remembered before. The brothel Madamettes, the Barbers, the Butchers, the craggy drunks, the aging whores, the opium addicts sitting black-eyed in their attics, the ugly girls. A lot of them remembered before, and those who remembered told stories in the downstairs of the brothels under swinging lampshades and thumping ceilings. In the Top, the land of virtue and beauty and the girls in towers, nobody mentioned before. Nobody mentioned it, and nobody learnt of it. Even the older people, the Tutorettes and the bearded grandfathers and, far off, the Chief in his mansion laboratory turning metal into gold, who remembered before never said a word, pretended it had always been this way. The young, pretty girls and their strong armed suitors who came over the sea believed that this was all it had ever been, all it will ever be.

A lot of people who chose to live in the Bottom, or ended up living in the Bottom, or were sent to live in the Bottom, were nameless. The brothel Madamettes lost their names when they turned from aging whores with fake names from before, like Crystal and Brandi and Bunny, the Barbers were Barbers, the Butchers, Butchers, the craggy drunks and the opium addicts sitting black-eyed in their attics had forgotten their names gradually as they cried in gutters and sweated in bathrooms.

I walked to the Bottom, by myself, with more than I have now. I had a bag of dresses, two pairs of shoes, two tiny bottles of Shampoo stolen from the store my mother made for the towers, a name.

I walked to the Bottom, by myself, at the age of 14, and the first thing I saw was the bloated corpse of a drunk with no name.

My name was Mima.

However, there was just one teeny tiny part of your book that I didn’t agree with. In the chapter about some media journalists and their complete misuse and misunderstanding of science, medicine and how to present this information responsibly, you often a) assumed all bad journalists were/are humanities graduates, and b) a large number of humanities graduates are, frankly, rubbish at understanding or even trying to understand ‘science’. I found this part a little bit mean. I myself am a ‘humanities graduate’. I know a large number of ‘humanities graduates’, or at least people who will soon be ‘humanities graduates’. A lot of these wordy, gullible and slow ex-students who apparently mystify, distort and misunderstand the facts and theories pumped out by more worthy ‘science graduates’ are very interested in the world of science and medicine, are very self-aware, very knowledgable, and – most importantly – very willing to discover more, learn more and are in possession of curious and critical minds not just limited to med students. In actual fact, a ‘humanities graduate’ bought this book for me, another ‘humanities graduate’. Some of the people I know who are most interested in debunking myths of science created by the scare-mongerers are ‘humanities graduates’, and some of the most gullible and easily led by tales of cancer cures and sure deaths and amazing breakthroughs and Gillian McKeiths are, surprisingly, ‘science graduates’. Being a ‘humanities student’ or a ‘humanities graduate’ does not mean that we are all automatically going to slip into shoddy journalism, belief in ‘words’ over ‘statistics’ and subsequent gullibility, nor does being a ‘science graduate’ mean that you automatically have a sharp, inquiring and inquisitive mind capable of seeing past media science scams. People are people, it doesn’t matter what degree they have done, but instead how their personality reflects how critical they are about the world around them and the information presented to them by alleged authorities.

Also, please stop using the terms journalist and humanities graduate interchangeably.

Lucy Mason

P.S. Despite this I really am not in the humanities vs. science, BA vs BSc rivalry camp. I think both types of degrees should be thought of as equally important, equally useful and completely stripped of their respective stereotypes. I have great friends and admire a large number of people from both sections. I also can’t express how much I actually did love your book. It’s very refreshing to finally have meat to flesh out the bones of my ‘MMR and autism really can’t be linked…’ suspicion. Thanks for this, at least.

P.P.S. When you challenged the reader to find someone in the room who knew the difference between mean, mode and median it was me. And I was right. So much for a humanities graduate, hey? (And they don’t teach us that in Art History lectures, promise).

P.P.P.S. Please forgive me if I’ve misunderstood anything. It’s very possible I have!

One of the days of walking we did, we ended up in this tiny, weird pub where the Coke and the beer was warm and the barman looked like something from 1920s Cambridge and the door to their home kitchen with an Aga and a rocking chair and a book about birds or flowers or something was wide open. Later that day we waded through nettles and ferns with the National Trust people, one of whom had had a tic in his leg earlier I think: the blood was dribbling down his leg, but he didn’t mind at all.

And then yesterday, to come back to Birmingham on a warm, sweaty coach with a broken toilet to see groups of boys vaulting the wall into a car park, throwing bricks at a police van, to have the transport people hurrying people onto the buses out of town, even if it meant letting them on for free. As soon as the coach stopped, three police motorbikes whizzed past and I saw men and women in riot gear treading slowly down the main street, as two guys with scarves around their faces pointed out to each other the plan of where to hit next and a man with a van welded steel to the windows of the pricier places. I guess I was pretty scared. I don’t know when it’s going to be right again.

On Wednesday I graduate. I’m quite underwhelmed by the whole experience. It’s sad that my parents couldn’t come for a variety of reasons (one of them being my insistence on going to university 150 miles away from home) and it was a surprisingly expensive event and to be totally honest, I’m not really a very ‘pomp & circumstance’ person. I hope the ceremony and the ball and the alleged emotion of it all will hit me when I’m there and take my breath away and prove me wrong. I really hope this.

* The word ‘abundance’ always reminds me of The Impossible Quiz and a cartoon image of a muffin with a ballerina’s legs. A-bun-dance.

So in balance – and in response to the peer pressure of my more literate, dedicated, and ultimately more interesting friends – I’m going to try to record all of the thoughts in my head again and carry on back down that road of self-invention. Someone needs to uphold the terrible use of punctuation in personal blogs after all. Titling my posts, however, is for another day

There is a lovely person I know called Chris who has invented (singlehandedly, from scratch, in his back garden) a super cool turbine that will basically save the world with green energy or something. He’s got to the final to win a Shell competition for Young Entrepreneurs, but to get the money he deserves he needs your vote

SO because you’re all so kind and environmental, vote for Christopher Yeomans at Estriatus Energy – don’t be put off by registering either, it takes like 30 seconds  http://www.shell-livewire.org/my-business-kit/preview/

Thank you!

You taste like

Hangovers.

All sweet like yesterday like yesterday like night like interlacing fingers like zigzags

Like forgetting what is mine.

Like what is yours.

Like forgetting.

I’ve forgotten

I’m a poet.

I want to be.

You smell like fire.

You smell like yesterday’s fire, like salty skin and sweat and tasting ash on people’s necks and threat.

And threat.

And threat.

And forget.

I’ve forgotten

I’m a poet.

I want to be.

I need it.

You feel like

Warmth.

Like toast and wrapping blankets round my face around around and sleep and breathing my own breath and yours and forgetting

It’s mine.

Alone.

I’ve forgotten

I’m a poet.

I want to be.

I need it.

Alone.

I’ve forgotten how to be alone.

I’ve forgotten.

I’ve forgotten.

How.

You

Taste

Like

Fire.

You.

How?

Just did some yoga so I’m all que sera, sera.