Red ones, yellow ones, pink and green, orange and purple and blue,
Cathy was a rainbow, was a rainbow, was a rainbow, too…
2am:
I can’t sleep, I’m too cold and I’ve got a stiff neck. My neck clunks and clicks like a seatbelt when I move my head. I must visit Katya, have my neck pulled. My sore eyes itch with fatigue. I watch my floaters, little darling fireflies(!), weave dizzy patterns in the dark. My bladder can’t make up its mind.
I smell toast burning, hear bacon sizzling downstairs: Stella padding round barefoot with the stealth of a leopard so’s not to wake me, bless her.
Stella always says, of my insomnia, ‘I’ll make you a nice cup of milky peppermint tea, Dabid. It will help to settle your tummy. Please try not to think of her anymore. You’ve got me now, dearest.’
Bless my angel for saying that. I do try not to think of her anymore, I really do, but fail!
I pull the duvet around us, savouring her intense aroma, brushing away the fine veil of hair from her face. She feels somehow warmer now, snug in my arms, but her frozen feet chill my calves to the bone. Two nightshade centurions, mounted on pale onyx plinths, guard our private la-la land, shining in the night like voyeuristic lighthouses beside our dark sea of love.
I sit up and look around me. She isn’t there. Only a cherry red kiss and her moult; gossamer threads of silky caramel scattered on our pillows. Her faint body imprints, hairline creases, concealed within a crumpled sheet.
And, strewn across the bed, the pedal confetti of her obsession.
2 years ago:
I first suspected Cathy might be a rainbow one squally, rainy day in May.
The click of a blunt key waggling in its lock. The suck n puff of a wet umbrella: opening and closing. Our front door, slamming shut. Her taut stilettoes, clicking on the red-tiled hall floor. Cath, beavering about in the kitchen in her damp stockinged feet so’s not to wake me, bless her. The squealing scrape of knife and fork on cold plate. The aroma of fresh Brazilian blend. Cathy had come home from her latest shopping spree, a very happy bunny, or so she told me.
‘Hullo Dabid, I’m home!’ she announced cheerfully, ‘Not still in bed, are you?’
‘Just resting,’ I hollered back.
I always used to rest for an hour after lunch. I suffered chronic fatigue, tossed n turned, couldn’t sleep at night, for worrying. I was a compulsive worrier, you see.
She used to worry me – a lot!
‘Where’ve you been, Cathy? I’ve been worried about you?’
She appeared at the doorway, towel-drying her sopping wet hair, her flowy caramel crust burnt a dark brandy snap brown, caramelised by the teeming rain. Her face, a rainbow of sordid, coordinated, food colourings: strawberry lips, clotted cream skin, iceberg blue eyes.
She threw the towel in my face, ‘Been shopping, haven’t I? Thought I’d tweat myself.’
‘Oh, you did, did you?’ I sputtered caustically, ‘Thanks for letting me know!’
She ignored by bristling sarcasm, turning her back on me, stooping to gather up four olive carrier bags brimming with pastel shades. She tipped the packets out all over the bed waxing lyrical about how she always managed to buy a different colour for every conceivable occasion:
Pink to match my blushing face,
Wed if I should fall from gwace,
Black for when I go to Space,
Gwey for…’
‘You’ve bought me grey?’ I interrupted. I was busy reading, see, only half-listening to her rambling, ‘But only schoolboys, girls, and genders wear grey. I really worry about you sometimes, Cath,’ I said.
‘Don’t be such a silly billy!’ she bent over me, pinching my exposed neck between her two fangs until they really hurt, raising a navy-blue bruise, then letting go of me, ‘Look, they’re fun!’
Wed and yellow ones, pink and gween, owange and purple and blue,
Cathy wore a wainbow, wore a wainbow, wore a wainbow, too.
I mocked her, ‘Call that fun?’
‘Mm, like me to show you my wainbow, Dabid?’ she teased.
Cathy undressed in front of me and showed me her rainbow. She had plenty of rainbow fun to choose from. Evidently, she wore her fun at work, rest and play: smart-casual, floral collages, formal attire, sports apparel, match winners, matching pairs, odds and sods.
2 months ago:
‘Are you weady to party, Dabid?’
I stopped buffing my brogues, looked up and swallowed hard.
‘You can’t go out looking like that!’ I said.
‘Why not?’
Cathy was wearing a skin-tight, rainbow-quilted top which accentuated her waif’s figure, ghost’s face, toothy gaps, chewed-up lips, sunken cheeks.
‘Because you…’ I began.
‘Because I what? Don’t be silly! I’ll be fine. Help me find my…’
‘No! I won’t!’ I shouted.
She swirled her crazy technicolour maxiskirt and went completely berserk.
‘Which ones? Jade? Amber? Cewise? Do these fit? Inside out? Are these me? Teddies? Kittens? Like me open-toed, barefoot, do you? Suck me, Dabid! Look, they’re dirty! These ones pinch. Look, holes! Hello! Piebald? Ingwain. Candy stwiped?’
Cathy was very ill. Marsden thought she had obsessive pedal syndrome. Wanted her hospitalised. To undergo electroconvulsive therapy. To regulate, control, and medicate her. To make her feet go cold. She wasn’t having any of that, thank you very much.
2 weeks ago:
I clothed Cath’s feet in black for her funeral.
2am:
Stella cruises into the bedroom with all the grace of a crippled giraffe.
‘I made you a nice, toasted bacon and cheese sandwich, Dabid,’ she tells me, wobbling it on the plate.
I sit up in bed, ‘Thank you, Stella.’
She cocks her leg, like a poodle.
‘I found these candy-stripe socks. They’re Mrs Pratt’s. What do you think? Are they me?’
Stella wears a rainbow, wears a rainbow, is a rainbow, too!
