#the black that has like the navy sheen to it then the orange red heads…. so inchresting

[arklay]

red headed kraits… big albert momence

[punkandsnacks]

Between Wolves & Doves, Chapter Two; Outsider.

Author: @punk-in-docs​ & @adamsnackdriver​

Also on AO3-

Trigger Warnings: Implied violence, sexual thoughts and some emotional abuse.

Synopsis: Vampire!Kylo x OC love story. Inspired by BBC’s Dracula. Also inspired by Austen’s Pride & Prejudice.

He’s been stalking this earth long since civilizations can possibly fathom. Before records even began. He sneers at the fact that this pitiful young world has only just begun to see his reign of it. 

He’s dined with moguls, emperors, princes. He’s consorted with bloodthirsty ruthless Queens in their courts, and whispered into the ears of powerful King’s, whose names still echo through millennia. 

In his myriad of centuries gifted to his immortal self he’s been many many things. He’s been a lowly pauper. A crusading knight. An assassin. A sell sword. A soldier. A wanderer. A simpering suitor and a voracious unyielding lover. Aimlessly lost in time- besieging this earth. Ripping it apart and drinking what’s left. 

He was made in the hinterland between snow and dirt and pine trees. Crusted with ash and blood and gouged from battle. Born anew. Sired from the hell-mouth of war. He was made in 789 AD.

He’ll come undone, one bitter winter night, in England, in 1816.

~ ~  🥀 ~ ~ 

 Night falls dark and still over the landscape brushed with snow. Westwell’s gardens seemed crushed under the icy weight.

 It seemed the heavy blanketing of it muffled and blotted out all sound. But it’s a peaceful intrusion.

 The huge square windows of Westwell Manor are flaked with frost and each square of glass glimmers gold with the tall candle holder placed in each one. A stick of fire and gold warding off that indigo night that shrouded heavy and deep in the sky above. Trying to spill into the window.

 Iris is sat in her small bedroom. A tomb or a cell, really, was how it felt to her some days. Wall to wall draped in pretty Morris flowered wallpaper of white sprawling flowers with navy and blue birds and country vines.

 Her double bed with twisting pillars of dark mahogany twine up to the wheat thick canopy that is draped over it. The mattress is layered in a fluffy champagne coloured eiderdown and white embroidered scalloped-lace pillows. The floors are dark walnut wood, and they creak wildly. Groaning. Cold and heat seeps easily through the cracks between them in winter. Chilling her toes. And in summer the warmth of the creaking cracking house bleeds upwards.

 The walls of her bedroom are sparse but some have photo frames of embroidery or pressed flowers she’s collected over the years held neatly in small wooden frames. She has a small stool by her bed with the tapered candle lit on a brass holder. Apricot flame coming off the long drip of the Chantilly candle. Casting pools of orange up the warm-ivory-bone of the walls. A jug of dried wildflowers sat on that little stool spices up the air. Dried lavender and clary sage, wild shasta daisies and a green-pink hydrangea bulb. Her little stack of modestly worn books lay piled neatly on the floor next to her bed.

 Iris is sat at her dresser, pulled near the window. With the roaring fireplace just to her left. Above the mantel hung a gilded mirror on the chain. Candlesticks alight, set on the dresser and on the alcove of the sash window. Two candles flank the oval of the mirror she’s sat looking into.

 Mother is behind her, dressed and ready in her purple muslin gown and her white fichu. Stabbing pins into her daughters hair. Every time she sticks in another pin, Iris winces. Blinks through the stinging pain of it. She was attempting a more fashionable colonial coiffure. Easier to produce.

 “Your hair is much too thick to curl properly.” Her mother addresses her idly. Snappily. Tugging back a section back behind her ear.

 “Posy and Flora have much finer hair.” She offers.

 As ever. Iris doesn’t know what to say to that. Should she offer an apology? Should she agree? Disagree? She fails to know how to be.

 So she remains silent and watches her mother’s reflection in the looking glass as she almost crossly dresses her hair.

 Caroline Ashton was maturely beautiful woman. With skin as clear as fine porcelain - like smooth cream. Even if sporting wrinkles by her mouth and eyes belying her later age. She had hair exactly the same as Iris’s. Except her mother’s was such an opulent shade of cinnamon-black. Stroked with streaks of silver like lightning bolts had struck through. Her eyes were clear silver. Two discs of shining moonstone. Very mysterious eyes, Iris had always thought.

 Lately those eyes seemed permanently hardened over like rainstorms. Clouded over with disappointment at her eldest.

 Always wishing she could do more to see more of the love that used to linger there. Nowadays it seemed like Caroline could only look at her and see the blemishes. Only see the wrongs.

 The frown lines seemed deeper. The cutting remarks appeared more frequent. She was always telling her to sit up straighter, correcting her posture. Smoothing out the wrinkles in her dresses. Always picking. Forever finding something lacking.

 Iris likes to think she was doing it out of an abundance of love. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer to her that it’s really about the opposite. It’s not about her wanting to provide for Posy or Flora or Father.

 It’s purely selfish. It’s all about her ensuring they don’t lose any respect in the ever omnipotent eyes of society.

 If her mother thought less about their image; perhaps Iris could love her more.

 As it is. Coldness and distance lay weighty between them. Thicker and frostier than the snow outside. The ground between their geniality and affection lay strewn and twined with thick vines of barbed thorns. No way to tread such hallowed ground without drawing blood.

 “Posy and Flora have had their hair in bows all day.” She points out. She shuts her eyes and grits her teeth as another pin slams into her skull. Yanking her hair right at the roots.

 “And they’ve taken all week to fret over choosing their dresses.” Iris adds.

 She looks up to see those steel swords of mama’s eyes cutting into her in the reflection. Mouth was a grim line.

 “You should know by know what’s expected of you, Iris. And not take the matter so lightheartedly.” She warns.

 “They can take balls seriously, as real chances of finding matrimony. Why can’t you?” She asks with a cruel tone.

 “Mama. Flora and Posy haven’t taken anything seriously since they day they were born.” Iris insults plainly. Speaking truth.

 “You know they only delight in attending ball’s and assemblies because they wish to make greater spectacles of themselves in front of soldiers from the militia, and get flirted with, by any creature sporting breeches.” She adds.

 “Atleast they try.” Caroline cuts in.

 “And I do not?” Iris asks. Flatly exasperated. She huffs.

 “You only danced with three men at last months assembly. It’s simply not good enough. You must try harder. Your sisters may have prettiness and confidence in unholy abundance. And they apply it. You wither away and that will never gain you a husband. For heavens sake- What upstanding man wants to marry the silent wallflower?” She declares gruffly.

 She fiddles with her new satin gloves sloped in her lap. Her dress was ivory silk printed with frail gold flowers and embroidered scalloping on the hem.

 There’s Van Dyke pointed lacing around her neckline and the same embroidered trim on the three-quarter sleeves. White helped ‘lift’ her ash eyes apparantly. It was fresh out it’s box from the dressmakers, Madame Larousse, on Pembleton high street. Indian printed silk and Italian lace. The most expensive fabric in stock.

 Their maid, Julia, had earlier laced her stays so tightly over her cotton chemise, Iris worried she broke several ribs. Her nails stung into the wood of her bed post.

 Mother was stood getting her gown ready on the other side of the room. Watching her eldest have the breath thumped right out of her lungs. “Tighter.” She ordered. Iris clutched a hand at her stomach.

 “A man could go a long way without seeing a bust like yours Iris. We must take advantage of it.” She comments wryly. Julia tugs tighter on the strings. Iris’s jaw clenched all the more.

 By the time she’s finished her waist is tucked right in and her breasts clasped high on her chest, almost so high they hit her chin and there’s scant space between her cleavage and her areole tumbling free, this gown is so low cut.

 She tugs it up higher when mother isn’t looking. Spectacles of her fertility not quite on such prominent display now.

 She fancied this silk of it was so fine and thin - and clung so tight to her body, one breath of wind would closely reveal her wide hips. And doubtless her chemise and garters could be glimpsed through the thin sheer sheen of it.

 And here she was now, submitting to her mothers inspection and brutal torture. Laced up in her silken gown. With her best stockings, and slippers. Earlobes dropping pearls, and a head full of silver decorative pins and an ivory comb.

 Speaking of which, the latter is just being wrestled into the weave of her coiffured braided bun, at the back.

 “There...” Her mother says. Fussing with a few strays. Tucking them in where they should belong. As she picks at Iris’s mud hued hair. She idly asks her questions.

 “Will you be dancing with Armitage tonight?” She asks. Insinuated, more likely.

 Iris averts her eyes and pats the back of her hair. Checking it in the glass.

 “Will he be in attendance?” She asks offhand. As if she had no clue.

 “Of course he will. Brendol knows the Hearst’s very intimately.” Her mother shrilled.

 “You will dance the first minuet with him and I’ll hear no more fuss about the matter.” She orders. Cold eyes finding her daughters in the mirror.

 Armitage Hux was the son of a strict local army colonel. Tall, dashing, hair as brilliant as copper and eyes as cool as teal sea-foam in contrast. He was lean and willowy in stature. Always bedecked finely in his uniform. Buttons gleaming, blushing blood of a red coat brushed and pressed to within an inch of it’s life.

 He’s not a bad man - he doesn’t drink or laugh at her. Or try and fondle her in a darkened corner.

 He just strikes Iris as being incredibly vain and undeniably haughty. He thinks all the world should be owed to him. 

 He only wanted to talk medals and glory and rank. How he was a model soldier. And so admired the bravery of gunfire and glory in battle. He’d never even seen battle - his father bought him a conscription and shook hands and pulled favours to get him a high rank in the military. Sergeant Hux, he now was.

 He didn’t seem to be able to equate soldiers and uniforms and weapons with actual war or combat. But liked to boast about how deadly he was. His sharp reflexes. His skill as a swordsman and marksman. Iris felt like stuffing cotton in her ears - or sticking her eyes with pins all night - anything but listen to Armitage spew out his toy soldier reveries.

 “He is a very agreeable man. You would do well to land him, Iris. He would make a most affable husband and a good match.”

 “I barely know him, Mama.” Iris pointed out.

 “You don’t need to know him. That is no hindrance to a proposal of marriage.” She says crossly. “You need not know your husband. You merely have to do your wifely duties by him.” She reminds.

 My duty of keeping my mouth shut and my legs and womb wide open, Iris thinks.

 “I thought I heard he was courting Mary Simpson?” Iris pipes up. Uncurling two tendrils of delicate hair from in front of her ears.

 “She has barely a thousand pounds a year. Brendol would never stand for him marrying such a girl.” Caroline declares mightily. Speaking in derision of the girl who was beneath them in every sense.

 “Besides. Lord Hearst says there will apparently be a very rich gentleman from the continent in attendance tonight too. A Lord Ren, from Bavaria. It would do well to seek him out.”

 “Every matronly mama worth her salt will be throwing their daughters in his path. I do hope he doesn’t trip on the sheer number of them crushed underfoot.” Iris says lightly. Pulling on her gloves.

 “And if he is a Lord, why has he deigned in all his lofty power to grace us with his presence, and to come to a small county rather than go to vastly over stocked marriage mart in London?” Iris questions.

 “Don’t be so blockish, Iris. Maybe he has business here to attend. Mrs Wilson told me this morning that he’s bought Hellford Park out in its entirety. Now that takes an extraordinary fortune.” She corrects.

 Iris looks directly at her mother. She spies the gleam of want in her eyes. The hunger that such a sum she could snatch up in her hands.

 “Lord’s marry Heiresses to sugar mills who are poised for ten thousand pounds, or widowed old Duchesses with vast crumbling estates. Why would he in his lofty state and means, lower himself to wed a girl of simple country gentry, with a barely three thousand pound dowry?” Iris sarks.

 Mama gives her a pointed look. Like a ream of needles pressing in her skin.

 “Then you will make a even better spectacle in front of him. And show him how elegant and courteous country girls can be and see if you can’t win him over that way.” She insists direly. As if she were plotting a serious military offensive.

 “If he is a Lord, he will be titled. Titled means landed money and dignity.” Her hair is yanked yet again. “He could well be the answer to all our prayers.”

 Your prayers, Iris points out rudely inside her head.

 “He could be a hideous old letch.” Iris says, rightly.

 Mother stabs one final pin into her head. As if in revenge. “Looks aren’t everything- Money. Station, and respect? That is forever enduring.”

 So are things like love, intimacy, friendship and happiness. Those things endure too. But Iris can’t imagine her acerbic mother has ever felt happy or loved a day in her life; she likes to think her marriage, when it comes, shall be different.

 She ends the conversation on that dazzling note. Iris’s scalp is on sore-fire by now.

 The door opposite them creaks as it’s burst open. Impending footsteps barrelling down the creaking floorboards of the corridor shortly before signalled their arrival. Flora and Posy.

 Fully gowned and gloved and perfumed to high heaven, with their hair pulled in elaborate coiffures on their heads. They had perfect curls. Perfect flounces and ruffles on their dresses. Cheeks a healthy pink. Eyes wild bright with excitement.

 They look like blooming silk roses in a summer garden. Iris feels more and more like a singed daisy in her own gown.

 Flora was dressed in a cobalt muslin, with a roller print of dandelions laid in pinstripes down the fabric. Posy was in a demure blush pink cotton. With lace trim tumbling over the neckline. And Iris sees she wins the honour of wearing the rose silk slippers. Flora is in some ivory ones that have seen more mends and fixes than is earthly possible. For silk slippers didn’t come cheap.

 Both her sisters have much lighter colouring; they both still have the chowder grey Ashton eyes.

 Flora’s hair however, is darkly mousy brown. Golden like toffee leaves that come off the trees in autumn. Posy is far more chestnut red. Blazing bonfires and russet red embers. Overall more enchanting than that of Iris twigs and sticky-mud hued locks.

 They are a barrage of noise and silliness as they barge into Iris’s room. Flora flops onto the end of the well made bed and Posy nosily inspects herself in the looking glass over the fireplace. Preening. Voices overlapping.

 “Mama! Did I tell you what Fleur told me earlier today?” Posy insists. Flora speaks louder over her, in order to be heard.

 “Mama....Have you seen my pink silk shawl for I’m sure I left it in the drawing room.”

 “I haven’t seen your shawl, Flora. You should take better care. And what did Fleur say, my dear?” Caroline asks in a soft voice.

 Whilst fixing strayed hairs at Iris’s nape. Pulling and pinching. She had no softness reserved in store for Iris. She rather wants to roll her eyes at that.

 “There will be a gentleman of certain lordly magnificence at the ball tonight.” Posy sing-songs. Aiming her teasing words at Iris. Who gives her a cutting look at her bubbly behaviour. Steel daggers made of her grey eyes.

 “He’s said to be most handsome, sable haired, and devilishly tall. And he’s single. And Lord Hearst says he’s a recluse who barely leaves his castle, so we’re very honoured he’s coming and he has eighty-thousand a year.” She awards with great enthusiasm. Flora giggles.

 “Maybe you should set your cap at him, Iris.” Flora jabs teasingly. “We could all be vastly improved by such a match you know. I could finally stop wearing these hideous thin old slippers.”

 Iris wished to point out that she wasn’t being induced into matrimony merely to vastly improve the quality and state of her siblings footwear.

 And quite wondered if he sister knew all that she’d have to undertake in making such a match - all she’d have to give up to be some man’s wife. All she’d have to do-

 “She won’t. For she’s already got a suitor whose madly in love with her.” Posy insists.

 “Hux is not in love with me, Posy. Don’t be ridiculous.” Iris says. For starters she wasn’t his red uniform or his army commission. Those were the things he was resolutely enamoured with.

 Standing from the dresser as she speaks, and going to where her new slippers were laid out by the maid on the bed. Flora eyes the silk things with jealous disdain. Iris fixes her satin gloves up over her elbows. Disappearing under her sleeves. Mother is too busy fussing with Posy’s neckline - tugging it up to cover more of her second youngest’s chest. She protested so at the action.

 Iris took the opportunity to slide a small pearl hair comb into Flora’s hand. Her favourite one. The one with coral flowers and paste amber gems on it.

 Iris flickers a look over the mother and a silent understanding passes between the sisters. ‘Put it in, in the coach in the dark. So she doesn’t see.’

 Flora smiles awfully wide up at her sister. Grateful that she shared out her pretty things. Flora was the youngest - the youngest daughter deserved nice trinkets too.

 “If you’re all ready we’d best be off soon. The roads are icy. It will take an age. I won’t have us be late.” Mama orders out to all her girls.

 She turns her head to Iris “Fetch your things and the velvet cloak. And for heavens sake don’t be long. We don’t have all night.” She frets.

 Marching out the room after rearranging some of Posy’s curls. Barking at Flora as she passed to fix the wrinkle in her gloves. The door grated and whines as she shuts it, lock rattling in the frame.

 Iris savours the silence - the crackling of the fire. The owl hooting off in the tree tops outside her window. She lets it soothe her. Let’s out the deepest sigh as they’re now left alone.

 She crosses to her wooden wardrobe cabinet by the door, and opens the door to search for her blue velvet cloak. She throws it around her shoulders and ties it up. Posy hands her sister her cream silk reticule.

 “She just wants you to marry well.” Posy says with some attempt at comforting.

 Iris nods, glumly stroking her sisters hand in thanks. Looking into her earnest young face. Still so full of innocence and hope.

 Her heart shaped little face so full of impish naivety.

 “She might do not to make me feel exclusively like a breeding mare to be sold to the highest bidder for marriage at every conceivable turn.” Iris says wryly.

 Angrily shoving a meagre few possessions into her reticule from her dresser. She looks down at her empty dance card that mother would see absolutely filled with names by the end of the night.

 She wipes away an angry tear from the corner of her eye with a handkerchief that Flora gives her. Her anger crowded and crackled the room. These two didn’t deserve her ire, after all.

 She sighs yet again. Letting the churning anger eating at her bleed out. Frustration filtering away. She plasters on a smile. Posy steps forwards to her exasperated sister.

 “Can I borrow your diamond droplet earrings? They’d go very well with my dress...” She asks coyly. With her hands behind her back.

 Iris rolls her eyes. Maybe they did deserve just a little bit of ire after all-

 “You are both enormous pests.” She says. Guiding them out her room.

 “Come on. Lest we hold mother up and I don’t much fancy our chances then.”

 She corrals her pests of sisters downstairs. Makes sure they too are cloaked and ready. They have their gloves and she does uncurl Posy’s palm as they’re heading out the door, dropping the diamond and earrings into them. They sparkle in the moonlight.

 “Lose them and mother will have your head.” She whispers to her in caution as they alight the warmth of the house into the cold sting of the night air.

 Snow crushed under their slippers as they make for the coach. Slipping to step up inside the cold wooden enclave of it. Rubbing their cold hands together to create some heat.

 It was just the Ashton ladies in attendance tonight. Father cared little for balls. Something mother sniped at him for regularly. Ernest Ashton would far rather stay home of a night with his ledgers and his books and his brandy than subject himself to the silly gossip and frivolity of idiotic society people present at balls.

 Her father was a tall, quiet man. Sturdy and aged as an old oak. Strong and strapping figure even in his later years. He quietly took interest in the world where her mothers inclination was to devour it.

 He had an open broad face. With tame blue eyes and thick greying hair. He was a studious man. Often kept to his study or the gardens. He enjoyed his ornithology and his Entomology books. He collected butterflies. All pinned out in cases in his study. Lining the walls.

 It was a place she found infinite comfort in. Wandering into her fathers study. His entomology collection like dots of silken colour in their cases. Old leather books and volumes and manuscripts. Edifying proud in their papery silence. The old wood of his desk worn by years and years. The smell of the study. Of old leather and pipe tobacco. And peppermints from the little jar he kept on his desk.

 He didn’t press Iris in the same way her mother always prevails to do. But then she sees the frayed gems and worn and mended holes in his clothes. The faded material in his waistcoat. How he hasn’t bought himself new shoes in two years.

 That’s how she can put up with every snipe and every cross word that spits out her mothers mouth.

 Iris sometimes quite wondered how her parents ever stood each other for any length of time to bear any children. They were entirely separate people whose interests did not align. They agreed on very little. And settled for that.

 It’s so cold in the coach they can see their breath as they bump and shift along the icy roads. Trees make terrible dark shapes in the near distance, beyond the frosted glass of the coach door window. Iris sits, peering out. Watching the full bowl of the moon slither white off the silver and black landscape. Off the snowy fields and perched on the roofs of the hamlet of houses they pass by.

 The carriage crawls slow up the winding drive of the Hearst’s three acre estate. Horses hooves hitting the hard paved path. Clopping in the night air. Skipping over the frost. They’re but mere minutes from exiting the coach, when mother decides to speak up and issue a few last desperate words of strict orders upon her eldest;

 “Take every opportunity Iris. I won’t have it said in the gossip sheets tomorrow that you didn’t even try.” Caroline insists. Fussing with her own thick muslin cloak draped over her lap.

 Iris looked at her mother then. Across the dark carriage as she tuts at the specks of lint sullying Flora’s cloak where she’s sat next to her. Picking it away.

 She strongly suspected Caroline Ashton could have the whole world in her palm or on a string; and even then she’d find fault in it. Pluck displeasing bits of it out like loose threads.

 She has that irate frown darkening her features. Cloudy set in her eyes. Posy’s little gloved hand reached across and held her sisters tight. Squeezing it in comfort sat there in the dark. Iris turns and looks to see Posy’s heart shaped face beaming up at her.

 “You should let us introduce you to Captain Clifford’s friends Iris. They really are the most splendid fun. I’ve heard many of them say they quite fancy you, you know.” Posy grins. Whispering hushed to her sister to keep her spirits buoyant.

 Iris strokes her hand and she can’t help smiling. More at her always sunny hopes. How bright her outlook on life was. She saw ball’s for the fun they were meant to be.

 A dance, a party, a celebration.

 Posy wasn’t yet tarnished by the knowledge that her hopes for future happiness depended on her behaving well and taking things seriously. It stopped being fun and became a chore. Iris lost her starry eyed wonder about ball’s years ago.

 She hoped she could help Posy keep her gleaming eyed wonder and fun for just that bit longer. She would suffer every second of misery to keep it that way if she must.

 She squeezes her hand back. “Thankyou. That’s very sweet. But I fear I shall be otherwise engaged in dances.” She excuses.

 Besides, most of the young Militia men she met were very wet behind the ears. And all madly enamoured with exhausting dances and infatuated with every beautiful young lady in attendance. Declaring they fell head over heels with every girl they so much as walk past. She finds their overeagerness and exuberance a little trying.

 Before long, they draw up the grand old stone columns abutting the front of the huge house.

 An immense hulking beast of a thing. Lit with autumn-blaze torches in the night. The coach lurches to a creaking uneven stop. Jolting. And a helpful gold liveried footman in a powdered wig steps to and opens the door to help the ladies out.

 Caroline doesn’t even glance at the man. Looks right through him. Flora flutters a flirty smile. Posy and Iris offer a polite snippet of thanks.

 The Ashton ladies make their way up the torch lit steps and into the greatly heaving bustling foyer of the Hearst’s grand house.

 Renford Manor was one of the finest houses in the county. The gardens were splendid. There was a maze and a famed marble garden gazebo.

 A great split imperial staircase opens into the large cool foyer. All ivory marble. Hues of Eggshell and ice. Imposing, echoing and cold. Footsteps rattle like claps up to the ceiling. Distant notes of the small orchestra float through the air like zipping flapping insects.

 Everything glimmers. The chandeliers that drip with gold and crystal. The old pearl and sharp onyx pointed tiles on the floor look like they’ve been scrubbed raw. They gleam almost too brightly.

 They hand over their cloaks to more footmen to be put away. Letting their ball gown splendour come forth. Iris is almost crushed by the amount of people there are in attendance here tonight. Lady Hearst was known to stuff her parties to the seams. The whole county, and all of the two neighbouring ones, had most likely been invited.

 Mama encourages them all up the staircase. Idly smiling greetings in passing to her matrons of her acquaintance. Iris skims one hand along the smooth cold of the marble banister. Holding her skirts up as her slippered feet hit each step. Steps firm and steady.

 They come to one of the big main ballrooms. Looking through the scope of many double doors, leading onto another room and the next and the next furniture pushed aside. There was such a crush of so many ladies and numerous gentlemen packed in. Coats of all colours on the men. The spectrum of silks and cotton dresses so vast, it quite made her head spin.

 Flora excitedly giggles and slips away. A flurry of laughter erupts and she joins hands with a little gaggle of her more intimate friends.

 Iris raises a brow at her behaviour, not surprised to see that she caught a glimpse of a fair few red coated members of the militia in that particular direction. Mother huffs and gruffly tells Flora, through gritted teeth, not to linger too long.

 Iris and Posy linger by mother as they chat to an elderly companion. Mrs Bishop. An ever worrying woman, Who ventured the world was going to end if there was slightly too much rain. She was practically apoplectic about the snow. Iris shares a look of pain with Posy. Who excuses herself with a bob of a curtesy to go find Flora.

 “Pest.” Iris smiles at her as she slips away from conversing will dull matrons about the impending end of civilisation and the earth as they knew it. Anymore and Iris will be forced to rush for  a vinaigrette of smelling salts to revive the poor dear when she swoons.

 Iris stands with her hands folded demurely in front of her. Her eyes wandering over the party in full swing behind her.

 The crush of noise, music and heat and bodies. Candies flicker doomed shapes copper and black up the light walls. The tall windows are guarded with heavy emerald draperies. Cascading waterfalls of apple green. Spilling and tumbling like grassy hills.

 The windows glimmer like yellow square gemstones from the candles in their stands dotted everywhere. The dark floorboards glow with it too. Patches of orange inbetween the shadows.

 The ballrooms, of which there were three, all adjoined by French pocket doors, are kept fairly dark. Lit only by the honey slither of candles reaching apricot slithers of light at every corner. People chatter and laugh to the din of a faint violin chorus of Mozart.

 Laughter, Baritone gruff and the sparkling light of ladies chuckling delight flutters up to the ceiling. The room seems to burst at the seams with it all. Like a room full of butterflies. The heat, the noise, the voices and music. It was almost too much. Everything is palpable and it stings and rips at her eyes and ears.

 They eventually depart from the hysterical Mrs Bishop. Leaving her fanning herself on a settee. Trying not to succumb to a fit of the vapours.

 They make their way through the ballroom. Chatting and conversing and being mangled in the almost too heaving crowds. She loses count of the amount of times her toes get stepped on. Or elbows sharply prodded into the soft of her back as people pass.

 Eventually; much to her mother’s delight, Iris is propositioned by a young gentleman from the militia, into a dance. There seemed to be no sight of Hux yet. Much to Mama’s chagrin.

 He’s very polite and puppyish, delivers her safely back to her mothers side when the polka dance is through. Kisses her hand, declares her daughter a fine dancer, then is off onto the next partner.

 They are lingering on the far side of the dance floor, just idly watching. In full view of the doors and the adjacent ballroom. Through the two sets of double doors either side of a great roaring stone fireplace. It’s light casting copper over every dancer.

 “We won’t waste our time on him.” Mother harrumphed when he leaves. Looking with disdain as they watched him ask Primrose Charleston to dance the next.

 “Mama. It was merely a dance.” Iris points out with a futile smile. “Don’t tell me you were picking out wedding attire and embroidered initial pillowcases.” Iris mocks.

 That earns her a sharp look. She smiles in forbearance right back at her mother.

 Her cheeks now pinkened and her eyes bright from the exercise. She likes dancing. When her partner isn’t a clumsy one, or reeks of port or body odour, or wine, or has wandering letching hands. It’s actually rather enjoyable.

 “We should be setting our sights rather more higher than some penniless officer.” She insists. Watching the couples twirl and sway in front of them.

 “Heaven forfend I dance with a man sheerly for the joy of it.” Iris concludes.

 Caroline tuts in exasperation. Mumbles under her breath. “You do so vex me greatly sometimes, Iris. Even worse than your sisters.” She grumps.

 Deep down inside, Iris is a little proud of that accomplishment.

 A flurry of footsteps and squeaking squeals and suddenly Flora and Posy burst into view where Iris and her mother are stood.

 Their voices are high pitched and they’re panting with excitement. Flora slings her hands into Iris’s and twirls her around with elation. Iris stumbles in the circle Flora leads her in. Posy is stood by Caroline grinning up a storm.

 “Mama, Iris. He’s here! He’s here and he’s coming this way!” Posy giggles. Iris and her mother remain perplexed.

 “Who is, my dear?” Caroline seeks. Frowning a little.

 “He is surely the most handsome man I ever seen. And so tall. Did you see him Flora? That chest...” Posy flatters.

 “Taller than any man I’ve ever met. And so well built. Such stature.” Flora says back.

 “And he has dark eyes, Did you notice?” Posy asks.

 “Of course I noticed! Very dark eyes. They are positively enchanting.”

 “Bewitching.” Posy giggles.

 “And his shoulders in his coat. So large.”

 “For goodness sake, lower your voice-“ Iris chides at the both of them, glancing around the ballroom. Trying to decipher who they were so flustered and flapping about.

 Her eyes don’t make it past the door-

 The room seems to have slowed. The dancers are distracted. People around the fringes of the ballroom chatter louder. Deafening din rising. Gossip flourishing.

 For Lord Hearst is at the entrance of one of the double doors, conversing with someone, and that someone walking by his side, is one of the broadest and most strapping men Iris has ever seen in her whole life.

 He wasn’t just a man.

 He was entirely too much, man.

 “That’s Lord Ren. The handsomely rich one all the way from Bavaria.” Flora hisses to them all. “I’ve never seen a gentleman more strongly built, or beautiful.” She giggles loudly.

 “I beg of you, lower your voice.” Iris chides. Pearl earrings jitter as she moves her head. Ash eyes governed by lintels of her brows creased up in a light frown.

 Everyone’s eyes in this small stale society, is fixed solid upon the sight of this newcomer. Hungrily devouring this unfamiliar brooding man.

 Obsidian jacket. Snowy shirt. Scarlet cravat like a bloodied noose around his neck, with a seers eye of a winking diamond pin studded in the knot. He radiates charm and magnificence. And masculine appeal.

 “He’s in mourning to be wearing such dark colours.” Mother presumes. “How unusual for a man.”

 “Don’t fret, Mama. Lady Hearst assures me he’s most certainly single. Now, Iris might have her chance at him after all...” Posy cackles.

 Iris rams an elbow into the bony cradle of her sisters petite hip.

 “Do try and endeavour to behave.” She chides to Posy. Whispering harshly.

 This mysterious Lord is unfashionably attired in all black. Perhaps he is in a state of mourning? Ink black breeches cling tight to his strong thighs and wide wide hips and shining boots come to his knees - the wrong sort of footwear for a ball but he doesn’t appear to notice. Or even care.

 He had an air about him that couldn’t be ignored. The dark clothes. Sable hair. It was long too. Far too long by societal standards. It curled at his neck. Swept in tumbling waves back from his face.

 He’s scanning the room like he hates everything and everyone in it. A soured scowl on his face. The softness of his full lips are pursed and there’s a predatory quality to the way his eyes flicker around the crowds. He seems above it all. Distant. Untouchable. He was a Lord - he held himself superior as one as if a different species.

 “Fleur told me he’s quite the scandalous man....” Flora begins.

 “I heard he was married. Once before, but she turned mad and killed several servants. So he locked her in the dungeons and she’s still here raking her fingers to the bone at the stone walls to get out.”

 Iris wants to roll her eyes. Now it’s Posy’s turn for interjection;

  “And I heard that his castle is haunted and full of ghosts. And he seduces young noble women and then sacrifices and feeds them to the devil. Maybe he’s prowling for next victim?” She gasps frenziedly.

 “You two need to stay clear away from anymore novels.” Iris scoffs.

 She lets her eyes slip back over this Lord’s frightening exterior. She focuses on the dark pits that were his eyes. They seemed oddly familiar. As if she’s glimpsed them before. In a fanciful daydream, maybe- or maybe it was a dreadful nightmare.

 They’re too far away to make out their true colour. But it must be a truly dark for the way they eat up all the light and glitter like rough cut gemstones lost to shadow.

 His arms folded behind his back pulls his coat right across his chest. Exposes the musculature of him: he is big and beastly. There was no denying; his figure is redoubtably masculine. Intimidating and strong- meaty arms, no tapering away at his waist. He was entirely built of great slabs of muscles.

 A warriors figure through and through.

 Iris thought that such a body frame belonged in a previous age. A more ravening one. A cutthroat one. That stature was suited to a gigantic rampaging viking or a crusading knight in steel armour.

 Quite why she thought so she can’t fathom. That big shape of his seemed unsuited to the setting of a dainty English ballroom. It seemed more natural for him to be on a battlefield slicked up and splattered in the blood of his enemy’s.

 She watches as he boredly sizes up the room before him. An arcing sweep of his eyes and he’s done with it. Thrown aside all interest. Devouring all pitiful excuses for life. As if he’s looking or searching for something...

 Then he looks right at her-

 His eyes spear directly into her. See’s her. Meets her grey gaze and keeps it. Steals it away beyond her reckoning.

 One side of his lip curls up. His eyes churn to look nearly honey gold in the light. Trick of the mind. All in her head. It was surely just the candles malforming the shade-

 But it seemed more than him just seeing her. It was as if he could gaze right through her. Pierce her skin. Puncturing her very soul - she’s sure.

 Her whole body feels his looking at her. She thrashes and aches.

 If she has one. Some flimsy scrap of quivering human spirit in her, it is quaking and trembling now, and very much intoxicated by this man.

 Her cheeks flush and she feels that betraying annoying heat slither down her neck and flourish at her breast. She swallows and blinks and tears her eyes away. She looks at her shoes cause she’s suddenly got a spinning head and her mouth is woolly.

 That look and those savage eyes had set a flame blazing right down to her bones. There’s something she feels deep down that almost seems strange. Uncertain yet resolute. A tug on her stomach. An unknown yearning.

 She realises quickly that this was the same pair of eyes that stole her breath this very afternoon. The gentleman from the imposing black carriage. Twice now she’s locked eyes with him and stared.

 He must think her either a raving simpleton or a gawping lunatic.

 “Iris. I do believe he’s staring at you.” Posy hisses with a wide impressed smile.

 “Oh he is! He’s definitely staring.” Flora squeals. Tugging and shaking her sisters hand.

 “Iris. Stand straight. Stop stooping. Chin up for heavens sake- look decent.“ Mother shrills through a gritted smile. Smiling demurely in the intended direction of Lord Ren. Preening herself like a flustered hen.

 Iris dares another look up. Clasping her hands together delicately in front of her. At the front of her skirts. Him and Lord Hearst are mere feet away now.

 “He’s coming this way! Mama! He’s coming over...” Posy grins. Flora laughs with her.

 By now, Iris’s heart resembles a mad creature clawing at its cage, desperate to be free. Thumping and thudding her neck. Quivering nervous breaths leave her lips. Heartbeat hammering and pulsing in her ears.

 He’s looking at Posy or Flora, she thinks. He must be. They always draw men like magnets. He’s not looking at me- he’s not. Really. He’s not-

 They are closer now. Lord Hearst and Lord Ren are mere metres away. The entire room seems to be holding its breath. Another dance starts up and she’s glad for that distraction.

 Her cheeks remained flushed and she raises her eyes when the air shifts around them. She can scent the brandy and violet water coming off Lord Hearst. There is his stout waistcoat and his perfumed wig. Lord Ren appears unscented. But a fusion of aromas simply pour off his vast body.

 Sandalwood oil. Probably used on that thick rakish mane of his. There’s something else too, something earthy darkly rich, that mingles with the musky new wool of his coat. Peppermint or spices. She can’t tell. It’s damnably distracting.

 “Praise the lord in heaven. We are saved.” Her mother mumbles gladly under her breath. Smile wide and gentle. Artificial and superficial to hide her truer nature.

 Lord Hearst and Lord Ren are right before them now. Right in front of them. “Mrs Ashton.” Lord Hearst begins in greeting. Iris watches her Mama curtesy politely to the old lord.

 “Might I have the pleasure of introducing you to Lord Ren. An old acquaintance of mine...”

 Iris looks from the doddery old form of the red faced Lord Hearst, up and up up, into the face of the dark stranger. The top of her head would barely come to brush at his collarbones. His eyes are still fixed on her face. A shock jolts through her like she’s been burned.

 “Lord Ren, this is Mrs Caroline Ashton. And her daughters. Miss Posy Ashton. And Miss Flora Ashton...” Lord Hearst introduces. Flora and Posy bob demure little curtseys at him. Bowing their heads and smiling prettily like fools.

 He barely glances toward them. His eyes were fixed on Iris.

 “And this is her eldest daughter, Miss Iris Ashton.” Lord Hearst beckons to her. Stood back behind her two sisters, and almost guarded by her mother.

 She curtseys. Chin to her chest and she bows her neck in a manner she hopes comes across as graceful.

 Lord Ren smiles. It’s terrifying in its power and beauty.

 It moves the corners of his lips. And he comes in a step closer. Advancing.

 Posy and Flora flatten back a little. When one hand comes around from his back, Iris could see he had thick leather gloves on. As if entranced she reached out where his hand beckoned to hold hers.

 She slipped her satin gloved hand into his big offered dark palm. It sits right in the middle of the wide thing. So dainty in comparison.

 He brings her silken hand up. Bows down and lays a kind kiss to the back of it. His eyes hadn’t left her since he entered the room - they didn’t start shying away now.

 This is a man who is not shy. Not any bit of him.

 He draws her hand down, very slightly. Freeing his lips.

 “Enchanting to meet you, Miss Ashton.” He says.

 Iris never knew a voice could be so deep. His voice sunk right to the core of her. Right through flesh and bone. Sinking deep. She’d expected a Bavarian accent. Or a continental lilt. But his accent is precise, crystal-cut English.

 She blinks. Remembering she had a verbose vocabulary to make use of.

 “It’s an honour to make your acquaintance, Lord Ren.” She gasps out with some hint of strength in her voice. When she lets her hand slips from his, her body feels strange. Her whole arm is left tingling.

 She finds herself sighing as she pulls her hand back. He straightens his back with ease. She knows her mothers eyes are looking sharply at her so she remembers her politesse.

 She feels like the whole world is watching them converse.

 “Are you, enjoying... your time in England?” She seeks. “I understand you are recently arrived.”

 “Very much.” He looks amused. “I haven’t been on these shores in- quite an age.” He says. She can’t help but feel there is something cryptic to his meaning.

 “Do you mean to stay long, in Hampshire, your lordship?” Flora asks. Batting her long lashes up at him so much she could fan out a chandelier of candles if she’s not careful.

 His eyes calmly flick across to the smallest Ashton sister. But linger back on Iris.

 “Not long. But after tonight I think I’ve found sufficient reason to extend my stay.” His smile twitches smoothly once again.

 “Are you enjoying Hellford Park, your lordship? Surely it is the finest house in the county, is it not?” Posy enquires.

 Another flicker of those charcoal eyes to the other little Ashton. Really, there were too deuced many of them, Kylo thinks.

 “It is an immaculate house. The snowy woods are very pleasant this time of year.” He agrees.

 “Of course. The climates in Bavaria are surely similar. I imagine there is much snow on your own estate, your lordship?” Iris asks.

 He seems pleased with her interjection. As if she were the only soul whose voice he wished to hear.

 When he looked at her, it was like they were the only two people in this room. The only two that mattered. It’s just them, in the candlelight, cast by flame. As if no pairs of eyes are watching - when in reality there are hundreds looking in. 

 “Indeed. The summers are short, and the winters are long and frigid. I am somewhat familiar with the clime of snow. It falls more gently here than in Bavaria.” His eyes glare warmly across at her. Increasing her blush.

 Caroline steps in with a saccharine smile that showed far too much teeth. A leer it could rightly be called.

 “You must come and dine with us at Westwell, Lord Ren. We would be honoured to receive you. We can promise you an elegant dinner service, and cards. Why we dine with six and twenty great and fine families around the county. We would be very much favoured with your visit. I wager you won’t get finer, prettier companions or better conversation elsewhere...” Mother boasts.

 He smiles right at Iris and it spears into her hot chest like an iron poker stoked too long in the fire. Red hot.

 “Indeed. I Thankyou greatly for the invitation. Madam.” Then his eyes grow blacker. “You have very fine daughters. God has blessed you three times over.”

 Flora giggles a beaming smile. Posy bats her lashes and grins. Iris fiddles with her hands and examines the floorboards, reddening at his charm.

 “I often think so, myself.” Mother preens.

 “Of course all my girls are immensely beautiful. But, it is my Iris who is revered around these parts as a local beauty.” She lies.

 “Mama.” Iris blushes crimson. Averting her eyes.

 “A rumour well circulated indeed.” Kylo’s looking at her. And to her amazement. She bravely looks back.

 “And she deserves every such compliment I can bestow.” Kylo adds.

 “You are too kind, Lord Ren.” Iris smiles slightly at him. It makes his chest pound harder. Watching her bosom heave at the neckline of her dress.

 His mouth waters. That same scent from this afternoon hits him square in the jaw like a rounded fist. He all but moans at the erotic pleasure of it. Of her sweet scent drifting up his nose. Stoking at his eager hunger.

 He will tear something apart tonight, rip it limb from limb, and glut himself on that sweet penny-metal flush of blood spilling down his parched throat. And as he does- as he feasts and drinks and crimson drips from his maw, he will think of this moment; of her aroused scent tangled in his nose. Stirring his own lust to boiling point.

 He bids the Misses and Mrs Ashton’s a goodnight.

 Lord Hearst had more introductions for him to make. More simpering sickening people to meet. All the same. Savagely polite and viciously boring. Their superficial kindness and flattery turns his stomach.

 A bevy of swans the lot of them. Preening and pathetic. He could barely hide his disgust at the stench of rotten perfume that beat off each one of their hot pulsing throats. All the vapid girls that desperate Mother’s shoved in his chest to make introductions.

 It was like the sheep throwing their own sweet little lambs out into the slobbering wolves.

If this were a less guarded age he might have already slipped away under guise of a romantic tryst in the garden, to drink a few of them dry.

 Posy and Flora squeak and shake Iris’s arm after he passes. He is led around the ballroom, that great vast man. Introduced to all the good and the great. They gabble and squawk at their sister about how she’ll be the next Lady of Hellford Park.

 She shushes them and sees it makes Lord Ren lock eyes with her from over where he towered loftily across the ballroom crowds.

 Her heart starts beating wild again. A demure smile and she takes her eyes away elsewhere. And that heartbeat calls out to him like the pound of a war drum. A bell summoning him to worship.

 Oh yes. He thinks. She is the one.

  And she’ll do splendidly.

 ~ ~ 🥀 ~ ~

[rebeccadunne]

Your Chroma

by Sinead Gleeson from the latest edition of essential Irish literary journal Gorse

I

How does it start? The black of pre-consciousness, the pink

of uterine breaths, the red highways of arteries, splayed.

The beginning is red.

II

Fly over

This country

Of the body.

A spy photographer

On an aerial loop.

There is

breast and

brain and

bladder and

bowel.

Begin the descent to bone.

Dive into fissures of marrow,

To the source,

The red and white cells

of the blood.

Canada,

Japan,

Poland,

Peru.

Venal Vexillology.

III

To put down words about the body—medical, biological,

anatomical—is to present the body as fact. Its being in the

world—a being ‘being’—is irrefutable.

IV

There is a photo of you. Your child body in a red dress at

a trout farm, the brown glitter of a fish wriggling on the

end of the rod’s line. You smile for the camera, and avoid

looking at the bubble of blood at its mouth. Its red gasps.

V

‘Colour is consciousness itself, colour is feeling,’ said William

Gass, who prioritised blue above red. Blue, he writes, is ‘most

suitable as the colour of interior life.’ Blue, above corporeal

red? What was he thinking?

VI

How do we decide this interior colour? We are one colour in

life, another in death; one in youth, another in old age; one

in sickness, another in good health. We channel Yves Klein

and create a new shade for the interior. A born again hue.

VII

Because of his synaesthesia, Wassily Kandinsky associated

colours with shapes, and sounds. For him, red was a square,

the ‘sound of a loud drum beat.’

VIII

Repeat red over and over—red red red red red red red red

red red red red red red red red red red red red red red red

red red red red red—and it’s a hum, a drill, a drumroll. It is

also not-blue, not-green, not-black, not-white.

IX

In the Tate, Rothko’s reds are dreamlike, hazy around

the edges. Are they on the canvas or under it, bleeding

through?

X

In an old cinema, long closed down, we watched Derek

Jarman’s Blue. I’m curious about his choice of colour, but

don’t question his motivation to use blue. In his book Chroma,

he says: ‘I know my colours are not yours. Two colours are

never the same, even if they’re from the same tube.’ I think

of his eyes and his failing sight. To be a person who has

spent their life looking, photographing, regarding—and

now cannot see.

XI

You are both redheads, and tell me you like to mark this

by taking photos of the backs of your heads. You do this

in special places. Howth pier, the Cliffs of Moher, various

lighthouses.

XII

There is a black and white photo in a local newspaper,

dating from the 1930s. It’s creased, and heavily pixelated,

with that old photo blur. But it’s him, Red Con. This is the

only photo we’ve tracked down. I’ve never met him, nor has

my father, but we are related. I descend from red hair.

XIII

If blue, as Gass argues, is the colour of interior life, this

makes red a colour of the exterior. But red is the body. Red

is blood, organs, tendons, the red elements:

Rashes

Hives

Sores

The raised bridge of a new scar

Platelets working on the crust of a cut

The speckle of heat rash, like pebbles on the bed of a

stream.

XIV

Driving over the Golden Gate Bridge in a convertible,

sucking in cool Californian air, they argue about the shade

of the steel. Red. Scarlet. Terracotta. Red again, some

consensus. Circular talk of colour under the shadow of

heavy cables, but he knows the bridge’s shade is officially

called ‘International Orange.’ The company that makes the

paint sells a cheaper version called ‘Fireweed.’ He takes this

as a sign to roll a joint and tells his friends that 98% of

people who jump into the bay don’t survive. Those who do

always have the same injuries: broken vertebrae, smashed

ribs, punctured lungs.

XV

You say tomato

I say blood

You say traffic light

I say muscle

You say fire engine

I say vein

XVI

LITTLE

Across the woods, basket swinging on a girlish arm, she

weaves off the path to pick flowers. Hood as protector—

stay hidden, girl, cover yourself up—in a tocsin shade of red.

Anti-camouflage. Here I am, come and get me! it says. And so

the wolf did.

RED

Get up! Her mother pulls the blanket off her teenage bed.

Take this to your granny, and wear your hood, it’s cold. The girl

is menstrual, cramped, innards torn. Her mother relents,

returning with a hot water bottle, and a box of Feminax.

There is a wolf in her womb, and she placates it with hot,

vulcanised rubber and codeine.

RIDING

The girl remarks on the size of her grandmother’s ears, eyes,

and teeth, failing to notice the lupine mouth, the rich pelt,

the cross-dressing, the anthropomorphic imposter in the

bed.

HOOD

In the belly of the wolf, she is safe. She cannot be eaten again.

Consumption saves her from more (male) consumption.

Stay hidden girl. Belly as cave.

XVII

Fairytales are always about women’s bodies. Rapunzel’s hair

and Sleeping Beauty’s somnolent face and Snow White

choking and Cinderella dancing with glass-slippered feet.

XVIII

Not glass slippers, but her aunt buys her red clogs, the first

shoes she ever loves. The heavy wooden stomp on the

concrete of the street, the scarlet curve of the leather a

possibility. She learns that women are meant to wear heels;

that heels appear to lengthen a woman’s leg, to accentuate

her calf, to make her more attractive. She decides she will

only wear clogs, or no shoes at all.

XVIX

Four women in black body con dresses gyrate to a 1980s

song. Robert Palmer, dressed like someone’s office manager

dad rolls through Addicted to Love. The women are heavily

made up, their eye shadow a palette of storm-cloud colours,

but it’s their lipstick I’m obsessed with: my mother’s matt

pinks and creamy browns having nothing on this. This red is

a declaration of war. The gloss is so high it looks like glass.

I practise on my lips with saliva. The models are arranged

democratically, two either side of Palmer. The only contrast

in uniformity is their faces and length of their dresses. Their

whiteness is a shock, the scraped-back hair severe. These

porcelain-faced, storm-eyed she-tomatons are part homage

to Art Deco painter Patrick Nagel’s women. The shock and

sheen of their scarlet lips is the only thing that interrupts their

monochrome faces. Is it because it’s the ’80s that the scene

is so homogenous, so lacking in multiculturalism? White

bodies the epitome of capitalism, even in pop music.

XX

How should we present our face to the world?

How should we present our (female) face to the world?

Make-upped, pore-blocked in shades of ivory and sand.

Brow-arched, lash-lacquered, glitter-lidded. Branded by

brands.

XXI

We used to paint our lips with whale blubber, but now it’s

mostly wax and oils. I have yet to find the perfect shade of

red lipstick. Too orange, too ephemeral, too knife slash.

XXII

I once worked as editor of a spa magazine. I wrote dull

copy about acrylic nails and Glycolic peels, and was sent

endless products: emery boards and seaweed unguents,

poultices and tanning sprays; exfoliation aids in wood and

sisal. I interviewed a woman who gave facials with coloured

oils selected for a person’s mood and personality. Part spa

treatment, part mystical woo. In her tiny salon, above a pub,

she told me about oneness and inner beauty, self-examination

and higher powers. After a pause in her well-rehearsed pitch,

she pointed to a fleshy bump on my forehead and said:

Would you not get that removed?

XXIII

In 1967, Irish-born writer Lucy Grealy moved to the US

with her family. Life opened up with possibility, but aged

nine she was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare facial

cancer. Grealy endured thirty operations, radiation and

chemotherapy. In Autobiography of a Face, her novelistic

memoir, she writes: ‘This singularity of meaning—I was

my face, I was ugliness—though sometimes unbearable, also

offered a possible point of escape. It became the launching

pad from which to lift off, the one immediately recognisable

place to point to when asked what was wrong with my life.

Everything led to it, everything receded from it—my face as

personal vanishing point.’

XXIV

I have never broken a limb, even if my bones are

troublesome.

I have never needed stitches because of a cut.

I have never exposed my insides except for surgical

wounds.

My skin resealed with metal, paper and thread.

XXV

When my teenage hip started to disintegrate, baffled doctors

kept asking increasingly random questions:

Did you fall?

(Who doesn’t?)

Have you ever been knocked down by a car? (Once, but the driver

was going slow and we lived in a cul-de-sac.)

Have you ever had a tropical disease? (Can you get one from

going to Spain?)

Have you ever been bitten by an animal or strange creature? (I tell

him about Lough Derg.)

XXVI

At Dromineer, Lough Derg was like a beach. I swam out

far from the shore to float in the navy current that skirted

the lake like isobars. Swimming back, I stood when the

water was knee high, and felt a sharp pinch on my foot. It

wasn’t glass, and felt more like a bite, but I couldn’t see what

lurked beneath. I thought of monsters and sea demons, the

creature of the lake. There are not enough horror films set

underwater.

XXVII

A hotel exterior, painted walls, a fleeing woman in a scarlet

coat, the vertical lines of blood on a hanging woman’s legs, a

nosebleed, a trickle from a mouth. In Suspiria, Dario Argento

reminds us that we bleed; that the body is vulnerable—not

just to psychologies and fear—but to knives and violence.

The body is the ultimate horror setting.

XXVIII

I look at the mottled skin at your back as a forensic scientist

examines blood splatter.

XXIX

After major surgery:

I wake up to find my skin yellow and assume this is iodine

or antiseptic used to prep the body for being opened to the

elements.

I wake up to find that this yellow is not an ointment, but

bruising, from the pressure of knives, the kneading of

hands.

I wake up to red and yellow patches, pools of colour, the

body’s semaphore.

I wake up during hip replacement surgery and feel strong

hands shoving, the weight of arms, a rearrangement.

Who’s pushing me? I ask, before the anaesthetist tops up

the spinal block, shoving me back under the waves.

XXX

Arthritis and surgery withered my bones. My left leg is

thinner than the right, full of metal and scars. Frida Kahlo’s

right leg was thinner than her left, a result of childhood polio.

Kahlo painted not just her body, not just pain, but body and

pain united. Exposed spinal columns, a womb that triggered

miscarriages, herself pierced by nails in multiple works. In

her diary, she wrote: ‘I am DISINTEGRATION.’

XXXI

Eventually Kahlo’s leg was amputated below the knee and

in 1953, a year before her death, she had a prosthetic limb

made. A laced-platform boot with Chinese embroidery in

red leather. Red as defiance, and for the body and for all the

blood she’d shed.

XXXII

For nearly three months, I wore a cast that covered most

of me. When it was removed, the skin had piled up, and

looked like wax. The sediment of immobility. Removing it

was like rubbing smudges on a windowpane. I felt like a

snake shedding its skin.

XXXIII

Bones are hard as rock but our edges—skin, lids—are not

shores. The body is an island of sorts, containing several

isthmuses, in the throat, fallopian tube, prostate, thyroid,

urethra, aorta, uterus. Body as outpost, as tidal island.

XXXIV

In Northern Ireland we pass bays and inlets, but also red

phone boxes, red postboxes. Imperial, post-Colonial red.

The red stripe of St George’s flag, many Red Hands of

Ulster.

XXXV

I think of you as though you are a map. Of the contours of

your jaw, the hill of your back, the compass of your arms. I

see them now, at 10 and 2, an almost-Jesus on a cross. I try

to imagine your body at 11:11, or 12:34.

XXXVI

We play The Alphabet Body game and you laugh when I get

Z. What about Zinn’s Zonule? I offer, but you think I’m making

it up. The suspensory ligament holding the crystalline lens

of the eye in place. It’s not immediately tangible; there are

no children’s flash cards like there are for eye or mouth.

Zygomatic Bone you say, and ask me its location. It sounds like

zygote, so I guess it is uterine or cervical. I’ll answer by kissing

you there you say, and brush your lips against my cheekbone.

XXXVII

After the birth of my daughter, by C-section, my husband

said he looked up at the wrong time and saw my intestines.

The operating theatre floor looked like a murder had been

committed. And you were red too on the outside, viscous

and slippery as albumen, but your skin was blue, your lungs

working to inflate.

XXXVIII

After the birth of my son, he weighs no more than a couple

of bags of sugar, but I cannot pick him up. A new pain

in my wrist is intense, and feels close to the surface, like

someone tipping a scalding cup over it. I take a glass lift five

floors to see a man who will fix it. De Quervain’s Syndrome,

he says. Can you get it from lifting babies, who are light,

almost not there? Two tendons wrap around each other in a

red embrace. One surgical slit with a scalpel, like a ribbon-

cutting ceremony and it will be free. This injury is also called

Washerwoman’s Sprain (not Washerman’s).

XXXIX

The patron saint of childbirth, St. Margaret of Antioch, was

a committed virgin. Tortured for her faith, her flesh slashed

with nails, she was given the title after an encounter with

a dragon. The creature swallowed her whole, so Margaret

made the sign of the cross and promptly burst out of its

stomach, Alien-style. (Film critic Mark Kermode once said

that Alien is a film about male fear of childbirth).

XL

I know a girl with Rosacea, which makes me think of

‘Rosary,’ not red. The skin is affected with papules and

pustules, reminding me of holy beads. I love these words

for awful things, and the galaxy of red under the moons of

her eyes.

XLI

You do not own your body if you live in this country. Your

womb is not under your control. Legislation owns your

ovaries. Lawyers lay claim to your fallopian tubes. The

government pays stamp duty on your cervix.

XLII

Tick tock, women’s body clocks.

Have a baby even though you’re not ready.

Have a baby when you can’t afford a home.

Have a baby when you’ve been raped.

Have a baby because you can’t afford the airfare to London

or Liverpool.

Have a baby between twenty and thirty-four, it’s the optimum

fertility window, they

keep

reminding

us.

The ticking of ovaries, your body as timepiece, swinging on

a chain.

XLIII

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.

Or

HIPS! TITS! LIPS! POWER! (REPEAT)

XLIV

Once you enter the medical system, there are rooms and

hospital numbers, blue disposable gowns and Styrofoam

cups. There are people speaking—always speaking—asking

questions, taking details. The body you think of as yours

is not private. It is in the system, on charts, in operating

theatres. Your body needs to take the lift to x-ray. Your body

needs to drink more fluids. Your body needs to come back

in three months. Your body is ours.

XLV

Just before her lumpectomy, photographer Jo Spence wrote

on her left breast: Property of Jo Spence? The question mark is

defiant and panic-stricken. The need to hold on to this part

of herself. To assert autonomy, even over the toxic growth

in her chest. To have a say in her own medical life. Later,

post-lumpectomy, Spence is photographed in profile, breast

puckered and scarred. Wearing a crash helmet, the image is

uncompromising. Come at me, it says.

XLVI

In the hospital, you are not supposed to use your hands.

In the bathroom, toilets flush and taps spill and blue

paper towels dispense with the wave of a sensor. Germs,

cleanliness, DO NOT TOUCH. The ward is a bubble,

confined and contained, and I feel like Margaret Atwood’s

‘Girl Without Hands.’

No one can enter that circle

you have made, that clean circle

of dead space you have made

and stay inside,

mourning because it is clean.*

XLVII

He used to give himself stigmata. Burning the hollow of his

hand with cigarettes. Pressing the red sieve tip into his heart

line, head line, life line. This is for you, he said, but I know it

connected him to himself.

XLVIII

The Catholic Church’s list of notable stigmatics is comprised

mostly of women, including St. Catherine of Siena. Born in

the mid-fourteenth century, she believed she was married

to Jesus, and that her (invisible) wedding ring was made of

his foreskin. Her stigmatic wounds were visible only to her,

and she suffered from anaemia. Every day, she fasted and

engaged in self-flagellation until she drew blood. In one of

many letters to her confessor, Raymond of Capua, she spoke

of a vision where she leads her followers into the wound in

Christ’s side, guiding an army into his blood.

XLIX

My birthday is the anniversary of the death of St. Ignatius

Loyola. Once a soldier, he was shot through the hip,

shattering his leg. I’ve never gone to war or been beatified.

L

There is no redness in death. Maybe this is where William

Gass’ interior blue comes in. But the body turns many

colours at the end: white, grey, blue, purple, a tinge of green.

The body spent and stopped and still is not red.

But when will the red stop?

When will I die?

  When will you?