The woman sat at her dressing
table, staring into the mirror. She’d been there for more than half an hour
now, unmoving, her eyes fixed on the reflection in front of her. One could
sense she was building up to some sort of crisis. Her mind ranged angrily
across the bleak landscape of her life and a string of spittle appeared at the
corner of her mouth.
She was drunk. And she
had a presentation party to go to. Her husband was to receive a prestigious
award for the highest production rate of his sector. What a joke. He couldn’t
produce a blue fart when he was at home.
She had married way
below herself and was now stuck on this godforsaken rock. Her husband was an
administrator. When she had married him he had been destined for great things.
But the milksop had let everyone else walk right over him, a fact that she made
quite clear to him as often and as loudly as possible. The wife of an
administrator of a backwoods mining camp on a piece of barren asteroid orbiting
Proxima Centauri, where she had nothing to do except show her cleavage to the
local barman was not the life she had imagined or deserved. But she had no-one
to blame but herself. She’d had the pick of all the aspiring young men of the
college and she had chosen Macken because she thought she was in love. She soon
found out that love can be misguided when it comes to choosing a suitable mate.
She discovered this quite early on in their relationship, but instead of
affording her mother the satisfaction of saying ‘I told you so’, she doubled
her error and stuck with him through all his demotions, too proud to admit that
she was wrong. Her pride was still intact but that was all.
Drunkenly she looked
around the room: the pink saphite dressing table with imitation mother-of-pearl
inlay, the kitsch Tami wallpaper and the repro Persian carpets. It was bad
enough having to live with tasteless furnishings without the added burden of
the little black flakes of ore-dust permeating everything. In the beginning she
had managed to wash them out, but eventually they became ingrained into the
very fabric of her life. All her linen and clothes were now a dirty shade of
grey. Even her skin was becoming irreversibly stained…no matter how often she
bathed. Black streaks had settled in the lines of her face. She was starting to
look like the planet she lived on. She had to admit it. She wasn’t beautiful
anymore. Her life was over. A great sob escaped from her lips.
She picked up the
cut-glass cognac decanter and smashed it into the mirror. For a long time she
sat amongst the shards; then, pulling herself together with a great effort,
brushed them off her lap and stood up briskly.
‘Party time,’ she
thought. “Dulcinea!” she called. This was the bitterest disappointment of them all.
Her daughter. The only fun she had in life was tormenting her daughter.
“My beautiful little
Dulcinea,” she said sarcastically when her daughter appeared in the doorway of
her room.
“You’re going to be the
belle of the ball tonight, aren’t you, my little donkey face?” she sneered at
her. She was indeed the ugliest child she had ever seen. Big flat face, and
ears you could play tennis with. She had massively big feet, and wiry,
untameable hair.
“You’re so ugly. Christ
what an ugly child you are. You can’t be my child, not with a face like that.”
Her mother swayed
drunkenly towards her and the little girl shrank back into the shadows.
“Well, tonight you’re
going to look like a princess.” She knew her tomboy daughter hated wearing
frilly dresses and took a special delight in making her do so. Not only that,
but she would add rouge and lipstick to the girls face, making her look like a
grotesque parody of a doll.
“But first, my ugly
little princess,” said her mother, lunging forward and clasping her cruelly by
the arm. “First we are going to have a beautifying bubble bath aren’t we? You like bubble baths don’t you?”
The child shrunk from
her at the mention of her mother’s favourite torture. Dulcinea, or Dutch as her
friends called her, was in the habit of playing with local urchins on the
mounds of slag left over after the ore extraction. As a result, her skin was
stained almost black. But not even the threat of being scrubbed raw in a bubble
bath (one of her mother’s many affectations) would dissuade her from playing on
those heaps.
The child let herself go
limp as her mother dragged her down the dingy prefabricated corridor towards
the bathroom. She slammed the door and locked it to prevent the girl escaping.
She had learnt to take this precaution from long experience. Then she flung
open the hot tap, poured half a carafe of ‘Mr Bubble’ and a dash of limescale
remover into the ring-stained tub and turned to strip down her daughter.
With a lot of effort she
lowered herself onto her thickening thighs and reached for the child.
Instinctively Dutch pulled away and her mother lost her balance and drunkenly
banged her head on the basin.
“Bitch,” she said,
slapping her daughter. “You fucking stand still or I’ll thrash you,” she said,
rubbing her bruised forehead. She tore the girl’s clothes off angrily,
breathing warm alcoholic fumes into her face until it made the child want to
wretch. When she was done, she lifted the little girl by her thin arms and
dumped her into the scalding hot water. Dutch screamed in agony and thrashed
about to try and escape the pain.
“DUTCH DON’T!” screamed Sweet Mary just as
Righteous grabbed for Dutch and caught her in midair. This time he made no
mistake and hugged her firmly to his chest. Dutch continued to heave and
struggle for a while, but eventually she calmed down. Sweet Mary and Righteous
moved to the end of the spit of land.
“Quickly now,” said
Angelo making sure that Rose followed right on their tail. He brought up the
rear and they all squeezed as far as possible out onto the wedge of land. The
smell was unbearable and the vertigo caused by the sucking, slurping mud was
all but irresistible. Then the ice struck the swamp right behind them and
Angelo felt a spray of water and steam drench him from behind.
The ice surged again and
again reaching for the little band balancing precariously on their island haven,
but the swamp and the boiling mud kept it at arm’s length. Everyone breathed a
huge sigh of relief and stood there shaking.
Their island was no
bigger than a canoe tucked underneath the jungle canopy. Behind them they could
see the massive ice sheet reaching to forever, in front the deep impenetrable
blackness of the jungle.
Mostly, they had to
stand. They found that only one person could sit at a time and so they took
turns, all except Righteous of course, who was too big to sit anyway. Dutch
seemed to have recovered her equilibrium enough to stand on her own by now,
though she was still worryingly quiet and Righteous kept hold of her bio-suit
just in case. Angelo and Rose huddled together, taking succour in each other’s
arms. The big problem was staying awake. Falling asleep would be fatal. One
slip and you’d be sucked under, never to be seen again.
“Why don’t we tell
stories!” suggested Angelo. “Each person can have a turn, and the most
interesting story wins a prize.”
“No ghost stories,
please,” said Rose. “Something nice.”
“I have a story,” said
Sweet Mary, bouncing up and down on her feet with her hand in the air. “Can I
go first?”
“Off you go,” said
Angelo.
“Well,” said Sweet Mary,
licking her lips in anticipation. “There once was a little girl who was
actually a princess, but nobody knew it. Every evening she used to have this
wonderful bubble-bath with warm smelly bath-salts and creamy soaps and lots of
lovely shampoos to wash her hair…..”
“Will you please just
shut-up about your stupid stories!” exploded Dutch out of nowhere. “Nobody
wants to hear about your stupid princess,” she shouted at her. Sweet Mary just
couldn’t seem to do anything right. Tearfully she bit her lip in contrition.
She had no idea she had just stuck a knife into Dutch’s sore spot. She thought
Dutch was just in a ‘mood’. Dutch turned her back on everyone and stared out
into the swamp.
“Sorry,” Sweet Mary
whispered to Dutch’s back.
Then she noticed Dutch’s
shoulders were shaking up and down and realized she was crying. She had never
seen Dutch cry before and Sweet Mary’s heart nearly broke for her friend.
Daring her wrath, she slipped her arms around Dutch’s waist and gently hugged
her from behind. She laid her cheek against Dutch’s back and let all her love
flow into the embrace. By and by the sobbing slowly decreased and finally
stopped in a long soft, sad sigh. Dutch’s breathing became more even and
relaxed and Sweet Mary dared to give her a little hug. Dutch put her hand on
Sweet Mary’s and squeezed her back. They were friends again.
Sweet Mary was the first
to fall asleep on her feet, and Righteous, standing right behind her, caught
her and lifted her sleeping body into his arms. He moved over into the space
she had been occupying and whispered to Rose that she could sit for a while.
“Thanks,” Rose whispered
gratefully, wishing it was her in Righteous’ arms.
Everyone then drifted
off into silence, each left to their own thoughts.
Sweet Mary woke up
screaming from a bad dream and nearly tumbled the lot of them into the bog with
sheer fright. There was a frantic scrabbling and clutching, wobbling and
grasping at each other to try and steady themselves before order and
uprightness was restored. For her sins, Sweet Mary was set on her feet again
and told to take several deep breaths. Even Dutch was stirred out of her torpor
and absentmindedly embraced Sweet Mary, somewhat restoring both of them to
their former good spirits. Rose stood up stiffly to stretch her legs and gave
Angelo a kiss.
Thanks to Sweet Mary,
everyone was now very wide awake, and likely to be so for a good half hour or
more. Angelo optimistically reckoned it was way after midnight already and not
so long to go before the dawn. But within a few hours everyone’s muscles were
screaming in an agony of cramps. One at a time they took turns in stretching
and sitting and generally moving around as much as possible without upsetting
the applecart.
They settled down again
and soon the sounds of the swamp began pressing in on their eardrums: the
‘plop’ of the boiling mud, screeching calls from some unearthly bird or another
and the occasional thump and splash as some awful creature disturbed the swamp
waters. At certain stages during the long, long night, through sheer
exhaustion, they would see things and imagine all sorts of monsters and whisper
to one another…“There! There, I’m sure I saw something.” And the others would
assure them they had not, and they would all settle down again like a line of
disgruntled pigeons on a branch.
Occasionally Righteous
would launch into a deep throated croaky warble that everyone supposed was a
song of sorts. He was the only black man they knew of who couldn’t sing. But he
kept them awake and alive. At one point they heard a furious splashing and
snuffling close by. It sounded like a large creature on the hunt for something in
the trees. They held their breath and remained as quiet as possible, but the
monster didn’t come any closer and eventually it snuffled off into the
distance. The rest of the night passed in a delirium of half snoozes, songs,
and terrible stiffness. When the dawn came, they were hardly able to stand
anymore.
“Okay everyone, join
hands. It’s time to go.” The little group made a wobbly about-face, and very
slowly Dutch picked her way back to dry land. How no-one had fallen into the
swamp during the night was just a pure miracle.
