Something on
|
Writing extracts by Rosa Barbour |
Something on
|
Writing extracts by Rosa Barbour |
The Tinder app chirrups gaily in my pocket like a little digital blackbird. I have matched with Seb, 27. Seb is a PhD student at Durham University, visiting Glasgow for reasons unspecified. He is handsome, but in one of his pictures he is wearing one of those T-Shirts that lists famously associated names in hip vertical text (John & Paul & George & Ringo, etc), except his says Derrida & Baudrillard & Foucault & Žižek. This immediately bursts the delicate bubble of denial I prefer to keep suspended for as long as possible when it comes to the fit ones: he is clearly, on some level - on every level, perhaps - a cock. Dithering, I zoom in on a couple of the other photos. He has jagged, daintily fragile white teeth and a chiselled jawline – chiselled enough that I could probably forget the dire implications of the T-Shirt if a coital scenario were to present itself. Reluctant to participate in the inevitable and vastly unsexy fellow-students-of-literature-circle-jerk opening dance, my fingers work deftly to take my degree details off my profile. Too late. Another chirrup, slightly different in tonal quality this time - a chaffinch, perhaps - heralds a message: Cathy! I would have guessed you were a fellow lit student. Us humanities folk can sniff one another out like wolves. In my mind I circle the words I take exception to (‘lit,’ ‘humanities,’ ‘folk,') in some sort of Star-Trekky digital red pen, and send the message back to him. I consider and reject a string of hollow, enabling replies, some if not all incorporating Wuthering-Heights references I have used several times in the past, when I’ve found myself complicit in other such dismal exchanges. Eventually, I go back into profile settings and delete my main display photo (me in a slightly insipid double-skirted floral dress, long red hair falling in waves to my waist), and replace it with a more recent image. In it my lips are drenched in gloss and parted in an overt display of sex-doll sexuality, and I’m wearing a top I ordered on ASOS that is really, technically, underwear. I put my phone back in my pocket and make myself a hot chocolate. Ostentatious peacocking is a good acid test, I find. It separates the talkers from the ones with hard-ons they actually want to do something about. After about ten minutes my phone pings again. Blimey. ☾⋆ We meet at The Old Hairdressers – his suggestion – there’s something on later that he wants to see. I decide not to Google the event in case the prospect of whatever it is depresses me too much to turn up. My agenda – the vampiric consumption of his jawline - must remain clear and unsullied. Seb greets me charmingly outside and puts a light hand on my shoulder as we go up to the bar, where he pays for two beers. He seems nice, actually. Bit earnest, but nice. He asks me about myself, and is attractively vague and modest about his own circumstances. It’s still not entirely clear why he is visiting Glasgow, but he seems happy to be here. He likes the people, he says. They are less ‘repressed.’ The bar staff are lively, messing around with a playlist of watered-down indie disco music from our teenage years – The Kooks, Razorlight, The Wombats (!). I start to feel pleasantly drunk and nostalgic. I wait for him to slag off the music, to make it very clear that he Never Liked The Kooks, Remember Luke Pritchard, What a Cunt, It Was So Good When Simon Amstell Slagged Him Off On Popworld, but he doesn’t go there, and I like that he doesn’t. I imagine him when he was fourteen, in a sunny English suburban bedroom, putting on ‘She Moves In Her Own Way’ for a pretty blonde girl with a snub-nose and rosebud lips. I giggle to myself: it’s nice. I don’t resent him. I like that he came from a different world, a world I’ve seen on Channel 4 teen shows and Gurinder Chadha films, but never inhabited myself. I chide myself for my earlier cynicism, my intolerance, and as the beers go down, I am really looking forward to sleeping with him. At 10pm, the bar area starts to clear a bit – people our age and a bit younger are heading up the fairy-lit staircase to the ‘mezzanine’. ‘Do you want to go through?’ asks Seb, eyes shining. ‘Yes! If you like. What’s on?’ ‘It’s a spoken word event – some incredible voices – I’ve seen quite a bit of their stuff online. There’s one girl who’s just… absolutely brilliant.’ I look back at the crowd flowing up the stairs. Bringing up the rear is Rose Keller, an obnoxious and unfriendly girl I remember from my university tutorials. She is speaking loudly to a wan-looking friend in brothel creepers and black lipstick. The word ‘gender’ drifts down to me several times as ‘Golden Touch’ fades out over the bar speakers. I take a deep breath. Spoken fucking word. ☾⋆ When we enter the room there are lots of people sitting cross-legged on bedraggled, grubby cushions on the floor. The first thing I notice is that none of them have bought any booze. I gulp nervously at my beer, wishing I’d bought another two as back-up. There aren’t many cushions left for Seb and I. Instinctively, I know I’d feel safer standing in the doorway, but he has other plans. ‘Do you want to go in the middle there,’ he says, ‘and I’ll, sort of, hover near the front?’ I notice that Rose Keller is also, sort of, hovering near the front. Seb doesn’t wait for a response, so I wind my way awkwardly through the mass of angular limbs and politically correct tote bags, eventually finding a spot between two middle-aged women, one of whom I recognise. Joanna Silversmith. She was one of my tutors at Glasgow. My heart gives a little leap of relief – a familiar face! O joy! Here I am, my budding mind once honed by her and others of her kind. I tap her shoulder and smile. ‘Hello. Do you mind if I squeeze in?’ She looks me up and down nastily. ‘ Squeeze? You’re a rake darling, sure, but morbidly obese I ain’t.’ Her companion, a blue-haired, slack-mouthed creature, lets out a Hallowe’en cackle. I sink onto my cushion, feeling the heat radiating from my cheeks. Two tiny pin-pricks tickle my eyes - the threat of tears - but there is a flurry of activity from the front of the room, and they don’t come. Rose Keller sways up to the microphone, her salmon-pink dress floating around her as though her bottom half has been submerged in a tank of crystalline water. I glance over at Seb, who is staring at her with the glaikit expression of one recently fellated by Christina Hendricks; a Christina Hendricks who’d just read a Cosmo article about the importance of perineum work. ‘Hi, everyone,’ says Rose too loudly, in her best ‘take-my-picture-by-the-pool-cos-I’m-the-next-big-thing’ voice. ‘So, uh, yeah! When I first came to Glasgow I thought – fuck – sure, it’ll be an experience, but in terms of the poetry scene, I’m a Bristol girl, so, you know…’ She trails off coquettishly. A ripple of knowing, indulgent laughter spreads across the room. ‘So, uh, yeah! I just thought, let’s bring a voice to this city! We have some fantastic artists here tonight - so, without further…whatever (we all hate a cliché in here!), let me introduce the gorgeous Guy Banks.’ Guy Banks is from Reading. He has things to say about the gentrification of Finnieston, where he moved two months ago. He stands too close to the microphone, so I can hear the spit clicking about in his mouth as he speaks. Being not a poet myself, I'm conscious that I am somewhat ill-equipped to criticise Guy-Banks-from-Reading. Instinctively, though, I feel that poetry should flow - it should have a natural pace that compliments its meaning, so that it permeates the listener, seeps in, nourishes, lingers. But Guy has adopted that unfortunate trend of delivering his lines with a monotonous, contrived rhythm that does nothing for me whatsoever – the hairs on the back of my neck remain unruffled, my heart still, my soul unmoved. It's a trend growing more popular by the second – there are teens with posters of Kate Tempest on their ceilings, Nationwide are using spoken-word performers to narrate their cutting-edge ad campaigns about the grafters toiling to keep our economy afloat(!). On paper, of course, it’s all ‘good’. Liberal messages communicated in new, imaginative ways. I’m down for that, in theory. In practice, though, usually I find it irritating, insincere and downright boring. I look around me, at Guy’s wide-eyed audience, and wonder whether what he’s saying actually means something to them – whether I’m the one in the minority here, I’m the robot - or whether they know that to be part of this… ‘scene,’ motion, whatever the fuck it is, they have simply had to learn to look as though it resonates. Next, Yvonne Harper from Leeds shouts very loudly for twenty minutes about tampons. It’s over for my beer. The happy, warm nostalgia I felt down at the bar has long since drained from my bones, and I feel scared. I’m scared that when I finally get home, the thought of these people will make me sharpen my kitchen knife and plunge it into the soft part of my cuticles until the blood seeps over my hands and up my arms. Rose Keller is last to read. She swooshes up to the stage, fully aware that she is commanding a room full of people to whom she is the ultimate prize. This time, when she speaks, it’s in a softer, ethereal, barely-there voice. She knows know what she’s doing. I find myself glancing around at the mens’ crotches for signs of movement. Rose’s poem is an aggrieved account of being cat-called in the street (why the fuck do men think they have the right to indulge in such behaviour, it’s 2018, we are not sirloins, etc, etc). Again, in principle, of course I agree. But I cannot help but suspect that Rose has fabricated this incident in her mind, not as a way of positively countering the lascivious and intimidating behaviour of men, but in fact, as a way of telling her audience one thing, and one thing alone: ‘I’m a beautiful young woman and men want me.’ Rose knows she can’t just say that outright, so instead, she has created a story vilifying a fictitious man and dressed it up as being an ethical and socially cleansing piece of work. This girl is clearly a straight-up narcissist, and she’s turned a roomful of her generation into an Oxytocin factory. She finishes. There is a short silence followed by rapturous applause and stricken, ‘I’m-so-sorry-that-happened-to-you’ expressions. Breathless and flushed, Rose speaks once more. ‘We have five more minutes, so let’s open up the floor.’ Thing is, If I were to go up there, get up to that microphone and say what I believe to be the crux of Rose’s agenda, I would be shot down in flames. I know that the majority of people who have come here wouldn’t understand what I was getting at – they would have me down as anti-feminist, on the wrong side, ‘part of the problem.’ But… isn’t that a bit, well, thick? Yes, I am appalled by any man who takes advantage of his physical or social superiority over any woman. Yes, it should be fought against. And yet, I have also noticed a burgeoning trend of women themselves taking advantage of their own perceived inferiority, and using it against men in a multitude of manipulative and extremely dangerous ways. I think that’s exactly what Rose just did. That’s what’s inspired the creative petites morts in so many of Glasgow’s bright young things. And it scares the shit out of me. Joanna Silversmith practically volts over the huddled cushion-dwellers so she can bellow on about Virginia Woolf’s vagina until the venue owners come in and, effectively, tell everyone to get the fuck out. I smile at them gratefully. Seb finds me in the throng as we’re leaving. ‘Fantastic, wasn’t it?’ ‘Yes, yes. Lovely,’ I murmur, fishing about in my pocket for my cigarettes. We push outside, where everyone is lighting up and wanking each other off, figuratively and literally, probably. I offer him a cigarette and he takes one absent-mindedly, his eyes darting and bright. A flash of hatred seizes me. The strength of it takes me by surprise. ‘Why did you move here? To Glasgow I mean,’ I ask him. His eyes meet mine, but he’s stopped seeing me. ‘My parents are a bit Tory. I thought it would piss them off.’ I dig my nails into my palms. I look up and down the cobbled alley outside the pub – this dark place in the city I love. Someone has overheard Seb’s last comment and guffaws towards us. ‘Me too, mate. And I did Lit, to top it off. They’re like, Humanities degree? Sort of, what are you going to do with that? Teach?’ Seb laughs. ‘I know. But, I mean, after seeing something like that, you just think, like, God, us Humanities folk have such a lot of heart.’ I could lose it, really go for it; 'WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE TO SAY 'HUMANITIES'? WHY CAN'T YOU JUST SAY YOU STUDIED FUCKING ENGLISH, OR FUCKING SOCIOLOGY, OR WHATEVER THE FUCK? DON’T YOU REALISE HOW MUCH OF A COMPLETE KNOB YOU ARE? DON’T YOU REALISE HOW ALIENATING AND MEANINGLESS THAT SOUNDS? OR – OR – ARE YOU PUTTING US ALL IN THE SAME BRACKET DELIBERATELY, BECAUSE YOU HAVE A MASSIVE CHIP ON YOUR SHOULDER? BECAUSE YOU KNOW OUR CHANCES OF MAKING ANY FUCKING MONEY WHATSOEVER ARE CONSIDERABLY SLIMMER THAN THEY ARE FOR PEOPLE WHO CHOSE, SAY, ACCOUNTANCY OR... I DON'T KNOW, FUCKING... FUCKING... ORTHODONTICS? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO FEEL? OH YES, US 'HUMANITIES FOLK' ARE ALL IN IT TOGETHER. MAYBE WE WON'T GET A JOB OUT OF IT, BUT WE'RE STILL MORE ENLIGHTENED THAN EVERYONE ELSE, AND MORE UNIQUE IN EVERY WAY. REBELLING FROM OUR ‘A BIT TORY’ PARENTS. YEAH, WELL. APPLES. TREES. DON’T FALL FAR FROM. I HATE TO TELL YOU, MATE, BUT THAT SHIT IS IN YOUR BLOOD WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. AND THERE-IN-LIES-THE-RUB.’ Needless to say, I don't go there. I see him clock Rose in her swishing gown, take my cue, and slip off into the night. ☾⋆ When I get home, instead of slitting my wrists (it’s a close call), I put on ‘Local Hero.’ I didn’t know this, but Mark Knopfler did the soundtrack. There’s one called ‘The Ceilidh and the Northern Lights,’ which is played over a montage of a ceilidh… and the Northern Lights. A young Denis Lawson swings his wife around a windswept Aberdeenshire hall. People drink whisky, sing into microphones, snog. Laugh. Outside the village hall, apart from the churning sea, there is peace. I fall asleep trying my best to think about that beach, that sublime Northern sky. I fall asleep trying not to lose hope. https://www.guttermag.co.uk/getgutter
0 Comments
‘I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make other people happy, because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless, and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that.’ Robin Williams Oh no, she knows where to hide in the dark Oh no - she's nowhere to hide in the dark She's a star. James – ‘She’s a Star’ 11 August 2014 ‘Hello! How are you today?’ She greeted him the same way every morning, but there was something about her; a touch of elevated sincerity that was almost magical, that made Robert feel that she cared for him in some small but significant way. Even when her face was drawn and nauseous-looking – as it often was recently – her compassion was striking – tangible, somehow. Today, though, he could see she was struggling. Her work blouse hung boxily over her body and her eyes, usually bright green and sparkling, were dull, the pale skin around them blooming a gloomy purple. When she took the packet of letters from him, he could see that her wrists and hands were very thin. Robert wished he could tell Angie the thing he’d wanted to tell her for a while: that he saw happiness in her future, even if it didn’t surround her now. A big bright kitchen. Children, probably. And love. She would come through her suffering, and there would be a pure, rare love on the other side. ‘Oh, no too bad thanks. I have a day off on Monday,’ he said instead. ‘Oh, that’ll be great. I hope the weather’s good for you.’ ‘Yep. The, er… the only thing is, my hayfever’s been bad too. My nose has been running, and my eyes. I’ve been trying to find things for it. Got something from the chemist but it’s no really—’ He faltered. Robert was a tall, virile man. He was a hard worker and a good father; he was liked by his friends and his colleagues. He was principled and intelligent, so much so that his line managers at Royal Mail were quietly intimidated by him. He had been unloved by his own father; as a result he had struggled with anger throughout his youth. He’d come through all that, and now he had a good life. He was loved, and in time, he had learnt how to care for others fully, without withholding or doubting the worth of his own love. Despite all this, Robert was as shy now as he had been as a little boy. Angie, instinctively, had sensed this shyness in Robert the very first day she met him – it was evident when he’d handed her that first packet of letters addressed to her boss. He’d had to ring the office bell again, having forgotten to ask her to sign for a parcel. On his way back down the steps to the pavement he’d stumbled slightly; Angie had tried her best to reassure him, but Robert had flushed a deep scarlet and kept his head down as he continued up the crescent. Angie knew that chatting didn’t come easily to Robert. She could tell that he had decided to make an extra effort with the information he had volunteered about his hayfever. She couldn’t be sure, but she sensed that in some way, this extra effort was for her benefit. So, when he hesitated, unsure of himself, she stepped in, nodding eagerly at his words. ‘Oh, mine has been terrible too. I feel for you! I’ve used a few ones from over the counter and I think Piriton is the best cheap-y supermarket-y one, but I think you can get better ones at the doctor. If I get one from the doctor I’ll let you know if it works. I’ll tell you the name of it.’ She finished with her high pitched, slightly goofy, out-of-place laugh. It had surprised him the first time he’d heard it; it wasn’t the type of laugh he’d expected from her. Angie was un-showy and slow-moving, but you couldn’t mistake her effortless physical grace. It was in her blood, part of who she was. It was something she couldn’t hide or cover up. As such, her hooting laugh had come as a surprise to him, but a welcome one. It made him feel comfortable in her presence; a sense if she was willing to show this part of herself to him, he was safe with her. Robert nodded, grateful. Angie looked at him for a moment. Not for the first time, she thought he reminded her of someone, someone from the past that she had loved, but who was no longer in her life. She couldn’t think who it was, but she suddenly felt a sort of displaced, spiritual sense of loss for them. To her surprised, her eyes prickled with tears for a moment. She pushed them away with a smile. ‘Oh well, bye then! See you tomorrow.’ ‘Yep,’ said Robert, after a small pause. ‘See you tomorrow.’ Angie had known for a while now that Robert felt something for her. It wasn’t sexual attraction, she didn’t think, though his eyes did light up each morning when she answered the door to him. No, the feeling she got from him was pure, and gentle, but sometimes she was quite overwhelmed by the intensity of it. It was strange, (impossible, maybe), but she felt like Robert, in his quiet way, probably cared about her more than most of the men she had been involved with intimately. As she went back to her desk to sort through the day’s letters, Angie felt ashamed. She thought Robert wouldn’t think so highly of her if he could see the state she was in at the weekend, throwing up on the toilet floor of a club before picking herself up and going home with a man who was about twenty-five years older than her, and married. She had told him that she liked to be spanked, but he’d hit her far too hard, making strange claw-like bruises on her arse. Soon after, he’d fallen into a deep, calm sleep. Angie, despite the green and blue shapes blossoming on her skin, had chosen not to leave his flat. His face had taken on a still, boyish loveliness as he slept. She had looked around the room for a blanket to cover him. She wasn’t being a martyr, she didn’t think… (well, maybe she was)… but it was more that she hoped if she treated him tenderly and kindly, he would wake up and wrap his arms around her in return. Angie was lucky – she had a loving family, and a small number of carefully-chosen, very close friends. And yet, ever since she was a little girl (but in the last few years especially), happiness had eluded her, and she woke up every morning with a pounding heart, gagging into the kitchen sink. It wasn’t so much that she thought she could fill the overwhelming emptiness in her heart with toxic sex… (well, maybe it was)… it was more she thought that indulging the urges of the men she spent the night with would in turn provoke their capacity for tenderness; that her earlier submission would be rewarded a gentler brand of intimacy. It did not - she was now beginning to realise - work like this. There had been a few young men of her own age with whom Angie had hoped to find love – a nice, nourishing relationship - but it had never seemed to work out. She tended to give lots of herself to them emotionally – too much, perhaps – again, in the hope that her efforts would be reciprocated. Instead, they seemed to drain her reserves for as long as it was convenient to them, and then they would get rid of her: ‘it just wasn’t working,’ or they had found an amazing work opportunity in another city (without even having told her they were looking), or she hadn’t quite matched up to their ex. Angie, despite carrying the wounds of each dismissal with her for months (sometimes years) after they had been inflicted, had managed to keep her heart open and her guard down each time something new and promising had come along. The latest disappointment, though - a man with whom she had fallen in love - had cut her deeply, and she was exhausted. At some point, Angie had become very good at hiding her sadness, not only at work but at home with her mother, or with her friends – she was so good at it that it wasn’t really their fault they hadn’t noticed something was wrong. But – it was strange – she could see that Robert had. As such, he represented a tiny moment of truth and honesty in her day. Though their interactions each morning were brief, there was something about the exchange that always rung true; she was not just going through the motions of her workday performance as she did with her colleagues, or the clients that came to the office. Angie had learnt at a young age that true human connection connections were rare, as such she knew one when it came her way, and she never took it for granted. After the hayfever exchange, Robert had walked back down the office steps with a scarlet storm of frustration clouding his mind – a feeling of an intensity he had not experienced since his truly angry days. He felt hopeless. The nature of his relationship with Angie prohibited any real communication – he did his best to demonstrate in other, subtler ways his understanding, but with two minutes tops in her presence each morning it was not easy. He could see that she probably caused damage to herself in some way that was not pleasant and very upsetting. He sensed that she was ashamed of herself, and wished he could tell her that it didn’t matter what she had done or said to others, or allowed others to do or say to her – none of it mattered – what mattered was that she find a way to start liking herself enough to stop putting herself in situations that brought her sorrow and reinforced her (utterly infuriating) belief that she was worthless, unlovable in some way. Robert had an unpleasant feeling that men had probably hurt Angie – she had the type of nature that many would take advantage of emotionally, sexually, physically. And yet (and again, he wished there was a way he could impress this point upon her) – she was not weak. Her potential to shine brighter than so many others was evident – it was in her blood, like her physical grace. Robert stopped dead on the street for a moment, surprised by the depth of his feelings for her, the colours and patterns and images that they were causing to take shape in his head. They weren’t sexual, though he knew it was an unspoken truth between them that Robert thought she was very beautiful – not just because of her face, or her body. He saw himself in her – well, his past self, the self that had required a lot of work - and as such, he understood her more than she would ever know. The first time Robert had met her, he had stumbled on the stairs, flustered after having to ring the doorbell twice. Angie, her magical intuition chiming in like clockwork, had seen it coming, caught his arm gracefully, kept her hand lightly on his elbow as he walked down the rest of the stairs. ‘Oh god, don’t worry, I bloody fall on these steps all time!’ She’d followed this up with her loud, slightly manic laugh. That night, at home with his family and children, Robert had thought about what Angie had said, that she often fell on the steps herself. A thought occurred to him: this wasn’t true. She had just said this to make him feel better, just like she had subconsciously cultivated her goofy laugh, to make others feel better, to put them at ease. Angie was willing to make herself look silly so that others didn’t have to. Having been in pain for so long herself, she wished at all costs to prevent others from feeling that way, at least, not as a result of anything she had said or done. Robert realised that he had met a very special person. He loved his wife; he had taken his time in finding her, and as a result, he had never really looked at another woman. But, over the following months, though he did not want to sleep with Angie, he often found himself thinking how lucky and blessed the man who ended up with her would be; how warm his life would be, how kind a mother she would be. The day of the hayfever chat, Angie had spent her lunch hour at work in the toilet, trying her best to breathe deeply and slowly, following the patterns of wood grain on the door in an effort to steady her mind. She was tired, her was confidence very low, and when she left the office to begin the walk home to her mother’s flat, she kept her head down low to avoid the eyes of others. She walked past a newsagent on the main road near her office. A huge headline caught her eye: ROBIN: HIS FINAL HOURS. Angie walked to the stand and picked up a soggy paper. A kind face stared back at her; the ink was soggy with rain but the eyes twinkled out at her all the same. With a feeling like a hard punch to the throat, Angie read the first line of the article. In the early hours of that morning, US time, Robin Williams had taken his own life. Angie remembered the scene in Hook that she watched over and over again as a child – the soulful black Lost Boy with huge dark eyes gently touching the adult Peter Pan’s face, realising he really was the same elfin teen he had once known. Angie hated so many performances by child actors – they were so often directed to be brash and uncouth, but this boy was gentle and sincere, and there was real magic in that moment for so many of her generation, despite the scorn of the critics. But the truly moving thing was the expression on Robin Williams’s face, his kind eyes, the way he knew when to do still. It was a face she had always felt she knew personally; he had always reminded her of her father a bit, and - she realised it now - Robert. For the first time in months, she felt that if she cried, the tears would flow from her for hours. She thought of the one who had recently broken her heart and she wished that he would turn the corner, see her now. She would cry on his shoulder – a cathartic, cleansing moment where she was finally at one with her emotions; devastated, but alive. The times that Angie had taken a knife and hurt herself, it had always been when she was unbearably frustrated and angry, and yet numb, so numb that she couldn’t cry. That juxtaposition, the combination of extreme anger and total numbness, was the danger zone. What else could you do, really? You could drink lots, or spend all your wages taking absolutely fuckloads of cocaine, lines and lines, into the next day, the next night, to stave off the suicidal come-down. You could buy two raw salmons fillets in the supermarket, slice them up, put on a silk dress, eat them raw pretending it was sashimi-grade and hope not to get ill. Or you could sharpen a kitchen knife and slash repeatedly into your arm in time to the beat of a love song on Magic FM. Of course, she could also try harder to be happy. She would, one day. But sometimes she just wished that someone else – someone who wasn’t her parents or her best friend – someone else, would give her a leg up. Angie looked down at the face she knew so well, and sobbed. The summer rain hid her tears, but her mascara flowed down her face and her blouse clung to her chest. Her bra was sheer; strangers’ eyes went to her chest. A teenage boy looked at her intently; she knew he thought she looked waifish, ‘fucked-up-but-sexy’ in the rain, with dark panda eyes and her nipples protruding through her office blouse. Robert, who usually drove home after a day on his feet, had opted for a rain-soaked walk, with the vague intention of surprising his wife at her office. He turned the corner onto the busy road and, despite the many people hurrying to get home, he saw Angie immediately: a pale figure, stock-still and alone, blurred by the rain. He walked to her, touched her elbow lightly. She started. ‘Oh! Hello! Hahaha. God, I must look a sight, it’s this rain.’ She faltered, and her face crumpled. She didn’t have another performance in her. Robert’s shyness left him; he knew now what to do. He took off his coat and hung it around her shoulders. He would have liked to put his arms around her, just for a moment, but he didn’t want her to feel vulnerable or ill at ease, so he didn’t. ‘Oh! No, no. No, it’s okay,’ said Angie, overwhelmed with surprise. Robert took a deep breath. He reached out and, just for a second, touched the side of her cheek with two of his knuckles. Rather than shiver or flinch as he thought she might have done, her face relaxed into a peaceful smile at his touch. ‘Take it. Just you take it,’ said Robert. In memory of Robin Williams. 1951 - 2014
Later that night, after the tears and spilt wine and stilted apologies, I buried myself between the coats in my wardrobe and placed a hushed call to Caroline. The line was terrible; I was on the verge of emerging from the soft folds of 2009 Topshop and second-hand Whistles until I discerned some tinkly words on the other end. They sounded rather like ‘Highlands’ and ‘in touch’.
About a week later, Bron shuffled through to my room in her slippers. ‘Mum phoned. She said do we want to go up North to her new cottage. She said she’s got a surprise for me. I said no.’ ‘Bron, I think we should go.’ ‘She’s only doing this because she’s seen a baby in her Boden catalogue or something—’ ‘I think we should go.’ It must have been something about my tone, or perhaps she was just noticing the hollowness in my cheeks for the first time in the cold afternoon light, because she shifted on her feet for a moment before nodding almost deferentially. ‘It’s a boy, by the way,' she said after a pause. 'I know it. And he’s going to be virile and kind, not like his father. I’m going to call him Marius.’ ‘Marius is wet. Valjean is more alpha.’ ‘I can’t call my son Valjean, Cathy. Anyway, Hugo’s original Marius wasn’t wet. Everyone just thinks he’s wet because of Michael Ball.’ ‘I really like Michael Ball,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you call him Michael Ball? Both names, like the Tiger in Life of Pi.' Briar twisted her mouth about for a while, trying not to smile. I did the same. Bron looks tired and very pale. There’s a slightly mad look in her eye – the same one she used to get at the Woodlands Road flat if she’d been cooped up too long. I can’t remember the last time she changed out of her red dressing gown, and I don’t think she’s had a bath for two weeks. The overall effect is a bit like if Kate Bush in the Wuthering Heights video had been paused mid-pivot, dropped like a spider into a jam jar and told she wasn’t allowed to dance anymore.
Bron has always reminded me of Kate Bush, minus the dreamy, slightly wandered eyes. Bron could remained ruffled and unwashed for the rest of her life and her eyes would still be sharp and quick. If a bit wild. We play at Paste –
Till qualified, for Pearl – Then, drop the Paste – And deem Ourself a fool – The Shapes, tho’, were similar, And our new Hands Learned Gem Tactics Practicing Sands Emily Dickinson ☾⋆ ‘Shrink Plastic’, it was called. Louise didn’t like the name. ShrinkING Plastic would be better, she felt. The lack of ‘-ing’ was somehow unglamorous. It stripped the whole concept of its magic. The stuff inside the box starts off big, and then you do things to it - apply heat or something - and it ends up small. It’s fucking plastic… that shrinks! ShrinkING plastic. Take the ‘-ing’ away, and it sounds like it’s already shrunk. It sounds ominously practical. It sounds… kitchen-utility-ish. The box was pretty though, in a block-colour-clear-plastic-Tamagotchi-packet sort of way. She didn’t feel depressed when she looked at that box. She felt… wide-eyed 90s café girl. Making coffee in a big bright room. Morning radio. Flirting with Jack Davenport. Better, anyway. It was getting dark outside her studio. Louise could tell because she’d left the shutters open. She could see two boys scooting around on their bikes, edging carelessly into privet hedges and dragging their feet on the pavement. She could see the rosy glow from the restaurant across the road, spilling out when the doors were opened by couples and families from the nearby houses, ready for their Friday night treats. Louise liked her view. She liked the people in the restaurant window, and her amusing boyish bikers. Two weeks of filing precious metals with the shutters closed had knitted her muscles together. It was time to cut her shrinking plastic into moons and ice creams and sarcastic kittens, and bake them alive in the oven. ‘‘Dulce… Dulce Ahumado Vaina,’ this one’s called,’ says Matthew. ‘You know, for simplicity's sake.’
The label, etched in monochrome by a local artist, bears a sturdy vanilla pod, held like a cigarette between painted lips. Jessica unscrews the lid. A sweet, humid smell pools into the air around her. It is the smell of her mother, before Jo. It is the smell of Matthew’s fingers on the beach, when he leant over and painted a neat strip of tanning oil on her nose. And something else, much further back. A sicklier odour, with the same mingling top-notes: Corinne, four months pregnant and still nubile on the floor of the girls’ changing rooms at secondary school. ‘Impulse’ body spray – the yellow one - cloys with the smoke hanging limply under the skylight. Corinne cackles as she takes her cigarette between her toes; angles her leg high to take a drag. Jessica stares in muted fascination as a tiny yellow thong disappears between stubbly, razor-burnt labia. ‘You looking at my cunt, cunt?’ She wasn’t. Well, not really. She was looking at the thong; imagining the thin material snaking its way up into Corinne’s stomach, and winding around her baby’s tiny, frog-spawn throat. Billie, it was to be called. After Billie Piper. Didn’t matter if it was a boy or a girl: Billie either way. If Billie died early on, thought Jessica, maybe Corinne wouldn’t bleed as much as her mother had. ‘It’s tobacco. And vanilla. Like the Tom Ford,’ says Jessica presently, turning the bottle over in her hands. ‘There’s nothing on the back. No list, or… ingredients.’ Matthew saunters. Hands on her waist. ‘Ingredients? Well, no, my pleb. You’re in darkest Bohemia.’ Jessica lolls against him: indignant, delighted. Matthew, with all the confidence and radiance of immense privilege. He smirks lots. Too much. He is downright filthy. But his eyes are clever and warm. It is love. He consults his phone drunkenly, chin on her shoulder: Pedro Ximénez. Fortuna. ‘Here we are. Dulce Ahumado Vaina. Translation: sweet... well, I knew that. Sweet, smoky little pod.’ He looks at her. ‘Little pod. Just like you. Pea-pod. Cardamom. Vanilla.’ ‘I’m not a pod,’ says Jessica. Jo and Billie. They had been peas. Seeds. ‘Well, anyway,' says Matthew. ‘I’m buying it. Te amo, etcetera.’ For a week, the scent takes on new shape and depth. It changes. It mingles with their skin, with carotene and sea salt. With week two comes the morning sickness. Vomit, bile, ‘Dulce Ahumado Vaina,’glass, Matthew’s cigarettes - all but one – straight down the sink. When Paul’s face appeared, hovering anxiously at her hospital window, Jessica was very annoyed with her mother.
‘That poor boy. Look at him. He loves you.’ ‘Send him away, mum.’ ‘I can’t understand it,’ said Susan. There was no easy way to explain her rejection of Paul, the father of her unborn child - who loved her - to her mother. It was all tied up in orgasms. Whenever Jessica visualised her orgasms (as she often did, subconsciously, and usually at the moment of their occurrence), she thought in colour. Each one was a mass of pink and red, like the glow in front of your eyes when you close them and turn your face up to the sun. As she drew close to the edge, a tiny white circle of light would appear in the blush. In order to achieve the fleeting stabs of pleasure that were the top prize of each frantic endeavour, it was necessary to touch the light at exactly the right moment, with the correct amount of pressure; in doing so, the spot would grow brighter, more focussed, and eventually split the rosy haze. When she met Paul, Jessica had made the unpleasant discovery that it was possible to have an orgasm that was devoid of any pleasurable sensation whatsoever. Paul never touched the white light – never came close - but sometimes, when he was especially diligent in his efforts to stimulate her, Jessica would go suddenly numb; the orgasm had come and gone without announcing itself, and the little white spot would pale and fade as soon as it had appeared. No screams. No light. No relief. There wasn’t much worse. The unbearable frustration of it all aside, Jessica was squeamish, and the thought of these phantom climaxes made her uneasy. When she slipped on her underwear soon afterwards - as she always did with Paul - she could not bear the feeling of the thin net material against her. The skin that covered her engorged clitoris felt thin, stretched to the point of translucency. She would be spent for at least three hours, and yet had been robbed of the heady dose of dopamine and the pleasant smarting sensation that accompanied her real, blinding orgasms, which had only ever been achieved when she was alone. When she went for a pee after sex with Paul, there was always a twinge, at exactly the spot he should have hit. By pushing harder, she somehow hoped to trigger the lost throes. Eventually, she’d give up, pissing out yet another near miss. At length, after Paul had been dispatched, Jessica’s baby fell out of her. He was vividly coloured: red and yellow and blue, but quiet. Jessica, delirious and exhausted, giggled up at her mother as a doctor whisked him away. ‘Start as you mean to go on.’ Susan stared down at her daughter tremulously. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Another night owl. Sorry mum.’ Jessica slipped out of consciousness for a moment. When she woke, she cat-called the midwife in her lairy Friday night voice. ‘Let me have him! I don’t care about the slime.’ Looks were exchanged. Pros and cons weighed up in seconds. This happened sometimes. They were used to it. Eventually, the tiny purple body was placed gravely into Jessica’s arms. She held him happily for a moment, before her head rolled back, and she fell into a deep sleep. Susan caught the baby just in time. She threw up bile into the bedside sink as she imagined his head bruising, or not bruising. She wasn’t sure if you could still bruise when your heart had stopped. In her dream, Jessica is about twelve, on holiday with her mother and sister. She lolls around on a jetty, jutting out from the sand to kiss a glittering pink sea. She is bored and too hot, in her mother’s huge white pants. She jumps into the water, and cuts her foot on a stone. It's sore, but there is something pleasant about the way the blood feels, flowing freely from the puncture in her heel. Lots of it. Enough that the water around her foot feels warm. Her head feels warm, too. She has never fainted before. She wonders if you can faint in water. Her mother and sister’s voices bleat down at her. She leans her head back, and lets her hair billow around, like the blood. As consciousness drains from her, she pictures herself in a film, camera below her, picking up the beautiful colours of her mermaid body. When she wakes up, she is being held aloft by strong arms. They lay her down onto a terracotta floor. It is porous and warm, as though it’s been sucking in the sun all day. When she opens her eyes, they are met with the steady, calm stare of a man. Above his head, the sun splits a rosy cloud. She smiles, and stretches her arms up to him. She feels that if she is taken away from him, away from the terracotta, she will be cold, and unable to warm up again. She feels a woman’s hand on her face; it is too thin and feminine for this moment. She brushes it away. The man reaches down, and places his own hands on her temples, and holds them there. No one, not her mother, could ever protect her like this man. She gurgles happily, and rolls over on the terracotta, so that her cheek can rest against it. The tiles become spherical; she wraps her arms and legs around them. The dream landscape shifts; she is older, back in her hospital bed. She clutches the terracotta sphere to her stomach. It changes; becomes skin. Her skin. Her bump. The man who pulled her from the Spanish water stands over her. ‘I’m all sweaty,’ she says, holding her arms up to him. She likes the way she sounds when she says it. He puts his hands on either side of her head, at her temples, and holds them there. I know nothing stays the same
but if you’re willing to play the game it will be coming around again Carly Simon - ‘Coming Around Again’ Something is rotten in the bin in the kitchen. I smelt it yesterday, when I pressed my slipper down onto the pedal too hard and the lid swung back further than I used to let it. I can smell it now, even though I’m in my bedroom, on the other side of the flat, and all the doors are closed. I press my nose into my pillow. The sweet, putrid odour mingles with another; one I have, until now, been only half conscious of in the gathering weeks. It is intimate and bodily. It has been lurking in my bedclothes, subtle yet malevolent, since R’s departure. I know exactly what it is. The thing that’s rotting in the bin, I mean. It’s the tuna tin that I cut my finger on last week. I’d dared myself to do the dishes, just to see what would happen. When I did the dishes with R, we always put the radio on. He was baffled when I knew all the words to the old songs. ‘You know all the songs. How do you know all the songs?’ He said it every week, the same words, in exactly the same way. It always made me laugh, how impressed he was. I felt proud, as though I’d written the songs myself. Without R, without the radio, the tuna lid sliced right through the skin, and into my nail, too. I looked down in surprise. It seemed strange that pain could be so physical; so sudden and sharp. I was surprised, too, at the brightness of my blood. I watched as it swilled in with the remains of the tuna. I watched for five minutes, maybe twenty. Maybe forty! Until a noise like a gunshot made me jump in the air. A forgotten carton of orange juice, swollen with gas, fizzed quietly at the end of the kitchen table. It smelt like Bucks Fizz. I dropped the bloody tin into the bin, without pressing the lid down, like you’re supposed to. It was still full of tuna, and me. Project for today: take the rubbish out. Not because of the smell. Just as an experiment. Do things as I might have once done them, even though it’s all absurd now, living properly. I smile to myself, nursing the thought of my little excursion, and only admitting defeat when it crosses my mind that if my tears become any thicker, I could choke to death. * ‘Ow, you fohcking COHNT!’ R and I used to laugh a lot when the men came to collect the bins. We both had Thursdays off. One of the men is Geordie, and always swore because Mrs. Munro fills her bags too full, and they would always split. Mrs. Munro is in her seventies, and unwell. Nothing about the situation was very funny, but R did a good Geordie, and we were smug about being able to sleep in. Sleep together. ‘Nice cohnt,’ said R afterwards. One week, R got up early, went down into the garden with a binbag, and divided up Mrs. Munro’s rubbish for the bin-men. It was discovered that the Geordie’s name was Mark. He was from Gateshead. His twin brother had been a mountaineer. When Mrs. Munro got wind of the bin-bag conspiracy, she came down to our door, prodded R with a bony finger and told him not to be such a ‘fucking sap.’ It must be Thursday today. It is ridiculous to me that Mark is down there now, doing his swearing. I think of John Hannah in ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’. ee cummings. Or was it Auden? Stop the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the Geordie bin-man from swearing when I’m here on my own. He was my North, my South, my East, my West. He was the only one who could make me come with his tongue. He was twenty-nine. I’m only twenty-two. He was going to show me how to be an adult. I’m not old enough to be in so much pain. Outside in the garden, Mark’s cries of anguish have not dissipated into the morning air, as they usually do. They are growing louder, and more urgent. ‘JESUS FOCHKING COHNT. SHE’S SLICED ME FOHCKING HAND OFF.’ My heart gives a strange little flutter as I remember. Yesterday, maybe the day before, Mrs. Munro knocked on my door. She didn’t say a word when I finally let her in, just waddled into the kitchen and began to wrestle with the rotting rubbish. I hunched against the wall and watched as the potion of tuna, fermented orange juice and blood dribbled onto her dress. The smell, now that the bag was released from its metal container, was truly horrendous. I felt no embarrassment; I didn’t apologise, or move forwards to help her, or take the burden off her frail hands. Eventually, she was forced to wrap both of her arms around the heavy plastic sack. When she got to the door, she looked back at me. ‘Get the radio on again,’ she said. ‘THAT FOHCKING SILLY OLD BINT’S NOT DONE HER TIN UP; IT’S SEVERED MY FOHCKING HAND,’ bellows Mark presently. I creep to the bedroom window and fix my eye to the crack in my shutters. Mark’s hand shines with bold, bright blood. ‘Fuck mate. That is vivid,’ says the other bin-man. Mark looks up at him, clearly furious at the lack of gravity his colleague has attributed to his condition. Then, his face splits open into a grin; he throws his head back and laughs. It’s the loudest laugh I’ve ever heard. ‘Vivid! Yeah, it is that, mate! Vivid! It is that, mate, aye.’ * The air in the garden is heavy with vegetation and rain. It thunders down and soaks me. My bare feet slither over my flip-flops and touch the gravel on the path up to the dustbins. When I left the flat, the easy-listening DJ with her smooth Galaxy chocolate voice had just put on an old Carly Simon song. I set myself a challenge: sing the song under your breath while you take the bin bags out, and if you’re in sync with Carly when you get back into the flat, tomorrow will be a good day. I hurl the bag into the bin, and run back onto the grass to avoid the putrid puff of air when the lid falls. I don’t want to go back into the flat yet, so I lie down on the soaked grass and close my eyes. There are sounds on the air. They float to me from my open kitchen window, two floors up. It’s Carly, and she’s singing along in time with me. Jackie lay flat in bed, sniffing the air urgently. She had just finished watching a horror film: a young woman called Joan is robbed of each of her five senses, one at a time, by shape-shifting poltergeist with white gnashing teeth. In order to claim Joan's sense of smell for its own, the creature transforms into a tiny red ghost beetle (with white gnashing teeth) and burrows deep into her nostrils without her immediate knowledge. This modus operandi proves so effective that it is recycled later on in the film, when the demon-beetle burrows deep into the Joan's eyeballs (to her full knowledge), and absorbs her facility for sight.
Jackie was concerned. Szymon, her landlord, had knocked sheepishly on her door earlier that day to issue fair warning about the jellied fish he was planning on cooking for his parents. All day the pungent odour had stuck in the back of her nose and throat. Now she smelt nothing. She pinched her nose hard, just to be sure, and then burst into tears. It had been thirteen years since Jackie had watched a scary film. The last time - and every time before that - had been with Lisa, in her boxy teenage bedroom back in Glasgow. They used to lie on their stomachs on Lisa’s bed, bitching languidly about their other friends and various family members, until Lisa deemed the summer air outside her window to be dark and dense enough for the main event. ‘Do we have to ?’ asked Jackie one week, knowing full well the futility of her appeal. Lisa, a force to be reckoned with since birth, had become fixated on the gory, sexy 90s horror films she saw advertised on her cable TV – Scream, The Craft, Se7en,Sleepy Hollow, Scream 2 – and the focus of her adolescent world for the past several months had been to get her underage hands on all of them, by any means necessary. ‘Of course we have to,’ came Lisa’s mumbled tones from under the bed. She was hunting around for her latest acquisition, bare legs and feet waggling around above deck near Jackie’s face. ‘Hit the jackpot this week. Managed to smuggle it out of Oxfam with a dress I bought.’ ‘That’s terrible!’ screeched Jackie too loudly, attempting to delay the inevitable. ‘It’s Oxfam!’ ‘I put £2 on the video shelf,’ muttered Lisa, emerging red-faced, blinking and victorious from her scrabbling. ‘Look!’ Lisa looked. A shiver prickled on her neck before running, appropriately, down her spine. The video case showed a ghostly white bathtub with a woman’s disembodied hand clutching at the rim. Jackie didn’t like the look of that bathtub, or the hand. They meant trouble. They meant sleepless nights for the next three weeks, or until Lisa’s next score brought fresh nightmares. ‘I don’t like it,’ said Jackie. She turned the case over in her hand. A good-looking middle-aged couple peered fretfully out at her above the blurb. ‘You will like it. It’s Harrison Ford. Look at him.’ ‘I am looking at him. I don’t like him.’ ‘He’s FIT.' ‘He looks like your dad.’ Lisa laughed very suddenly and very loudly. It made Jackie jump. ‘My mum fucking wishes he looked like my dad.’ ‘Who’s the woman?’ ‘Who’s the woman!? It’s Michelle Pfeiffer. My mum wishes she looked likeher. Now move up. We’re watching it. If you don’t like it, just pretend you’re a reeeally scary ghost yourself. A real bad-ass. That’ll be me soon. A real-life ghost.’ Jackie didn’t like it when Lisa made light of her illness like this; it was morbid and irreverent, and it made Jackie’s chest ache with pain, but she knew what was expected of her. ‘Do you think you’ll be a good ghost or a bad one?’ ‘Bad one. Oh yeah, fucking definitely! I’ll get into bed with Harrison Ford when he doesn’t know it.’ ‘Gross.’ Jackie giggled, then went quiet. She knew her friend was right. Even in death, she’d be braver than Jackie was. Ruth lolled on the hot concrete of the airport car park and glared malevolently at her father. She felt he deserved it. He was wearing pink shorts with ducks on them and negotiating loudly with the bemused Portuguese man in charge of the Europcarrentals.
‘Run smoothly, does she? Built for the heat?’ Ruth’s mother Susan’s voice was the next to reach her on the gentle Iberian breeze. ‘Ohforfuck’ssakePete. Christ.’ Ruth hoisted herself vertical. Her brother Luca, eight years old and seven her junior, was close by, pulling a stranger’s discarded bubble-gum from a crack in the ground. ‘How much do you hate dad? Look at his shorts,’ said Ruth, shuffling up beside him. Luca remained silent, committed to his sticky task with uncharacteristic solemnity. His loyalty, Ruth knew, was based almost entirely on a pleading bribe extended to him on the plane by their mother. Mention had been made of a certain inflatable pool-toy from the resort shop, pined after fruitlessly by Luca on holidays gone by. Rendered in the (somewhat impractical) shape of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, it was red, it was Luca’s heart’s desire and - for the first time - it was within his grasp. All he had to do was ‘behave himself’ from plane to villa. Luca was not sure where exactly Susan would pin his current business with the bubble-gum on the ‘behaving himself’ spectrum, but as it was a quiet preoccupation and his father’s own antics had once again taken centre-stage, he thought he was probably alright so far. At any rate, he was not inclined to destroy his chances by allowing his sister to draw him into one of her conspiratorial parent-bashing sessions. Luca knew from experience that being discovered as a participant in Ruth's vicious tête-à-têtes did not, in general, result in any T-Rex-based rewards... unless you counted the admittedly reptilian transformation of his mother when she reached peak anger zone. And yet... The resort shop was not known for its consistency of stock. This year round, they could just as easily be kitted out with benevolent, Herbivorous, greeninflatables. Herbivores would not do. Green would not do. Susan was on shaky ground with the T-Rex bribe, and they all knew it. As such, Ruth persevered with her provocations. ‘Look how annoying dad is. Just look at him. Even if you couldn't hear him, he'd be annoying. Mum’s about to lose it, look.’ Luca, thinking resentfully of Diplodocuses - the gentle, boring fools - allowed himself a glance in the direction of his parents. Sure enough, Susan was at breaking point, shifting from foot to foot, beetroot-faced as Pete bellowed on about air conditioning to the now rather alarmed-looking car dealer. ‘Imagine you were mum and you had to kiss dad,’ whispered Ruth in Luca’s ear. Luca screamed. She clamped a hand over his sticky mouth. To her astonishment, the kerfuffle went unnoticed as their father opened, slammed and re-opened the driver door for the final time. ‘Okay kiddos! All in order. Thunderbirds are go.’ |