Here is the Beehive
Page 4
but Mark shakes his head.
‘I can’t meet you again.
If I do and Donna gets wind …
She caught me once before.’
‘Doing what? Consoling one of Connor’s lovers?’
‘Funny.’
A child passing the pub chases a butterfly.
His mother smiles, shouts, ‘Keep out of the road!’,
placidly pushing an empty pram.
In her hand is a half-sucked lollipop.
‘I know how to be without him
because of how things were, but not like this.
I can’t win him back.
Or win him at all.
You know?’
Mark takes off his fedora, places it
between us
on the table.
‘He never found your break-ups easy.
He fell apart a few times. He struggled.’
‘He always seemed fine.’
‘He said that about you too.’
‘We only ever broke up when I’d had enough
of his indecision and ended it.
He just waited for me to crack and call him,
started trouble at home
so he had an excuse to take me back
whenever I eventually got in touch.’
The table next to us is free,
just a residue of cashews and crisps
left on crumpled packets.
Someone has left behind a calculator.
I have an urge to clean up,
leave the space ready.
Mark leans in. ‘You don’t know Rebecca.’
‘How do you mean?’
Finally it feels like conspiracy,
and I want Mark to malign her,
chronicle a ruined marriage,
your imprisonment,
pain.
‘She isn’t the sort of woman you leave,’ Mark says simply.
‘Well, he’s left her now,’ I snap.
Outside, the butterfly still spins in the breeze.
‘And she’ll never have to know what happened
or how he felt. There’s a blessing.’
‘I suppose she could still find out.’
I drain my glass.
Mark lifts his chin.
‘No, she won’t, so don’t even think about it.’
The table next to us fills with a loud group.
‘My round,’ I say, and leave him to worry,
forgetting he isn’t you
and doesn’t deserve to be terrorised.
I thought Mark would be enough.
But I need more.
I want him to tell me you loathed Rebecca.
I want him to tell me our love shattered you.
I want him to tell me that if you were alive
you would have picked me
eventually.
When I return to the table I set down the drinks.
‘Tell me I exist,’ I say.
Paul sends a message:
Get milk.
But all the organic semi-skimmed has sold out.
They have full-fat organic, blue-top,
regular semi-skimmed, green-top.
I approach a shelf-stacker.
‘Could you look in the back to
see if you’ve any green-top organic?’
She bites her pierced lip.
‘Cow udders are filled with pus.
It gets infected from over-production.
Makes no difference what you buy.’
She is right: choice is a myth.
What’s written on a label
is rarely what’s inside.
‘I’d like you to look. In any case.’
She returns with a bottle of organic green-top.
I put it into my basket,
head to the end of the aisle for cereal.
Paul opens the milk for tea.
‘Hard day?’ He eyes a hole in the
toe of my sock.
‘Uh huh.’ I search for my slippers.
I am glad to be so unsexy.
I would hate to be wanted.
I was eleven and Nora was fourteen when she said,
‘You were an accident.
Mum didn’t want you.’
I wouldn’t believe her.
We were sitting on the wall
behind our house,
legs scratching against the brickwork,
chucking raisins at pigeons.
We were still in our velvet Irish dancing dresses,
heavy shoes,
feet dangling limply.
Nora had won three trophies and several medals that morning
at a feis in South London.
I hadn’t placed in any dance –
my sister was the star.
Inside, Mum and Dad were watching TV in separate rooms.
My friends were jealous we had two televisions
but I never explained why,
just made out we had money,
when anyone with eyes could’ve seen the state of the place.
Nora continued:
‘You don’t look like dad.’
I’d only recently learned about sex,
what happens to bring about babies.
In biology I’d asked, ‘But how do they get inside?’
The teacher sidled up to me.
‘How do they get in there?
Don’t you have any friends, Ana Kelly?’
Everyone on my bench laughed.
I pushed my little finger into the gas tap.
Behind me, in a tank, the fish stank.
Nora explained on the walk home.
It sounded like an ugly operation.
‘I’m not saying you’re illegitimate.
But it’s possible.’
She twisted my arm until it burned
and hopped down from the wall.
‘But it would explain why I’m pretty
and you’re plain.’
That night Mum gave us Rice Krispies for dinner
and tried to pretend it was a treat.
Dad did a bunk and got home three days later
wearing new trainers.
I can’t remember our curtains ever being open.
The first time
we made love
we knew
that’s what it was
before we’d taken off our coats.
The possibility of
turning it into
a one-night stand
never stood a chance.
We agreed to meet far from North London
at Paddington train station,
then went for tea,
and there was a second kiss.
And a hotel.
And.
We planned that first time
without admitting to it
and when it came
we both knew:
there could be
no simple full stop.
You read Raymond Carver aloud
while I made instant coffee – all the hotel had,
plus long-life milk.
‘Do you read to Rebecca?’
You sniggered and it pleased me.
‘Rebecca reads to Rebecca.’
‘But she reads to the boys? She must.’
I longed to hear how she failed.
‘She used to when they were little.
Less so now, you know.’
I nodded but made a sound that was disapproval.
‘What’s Rebecca like?’
I studied your expression.
Was I permitted to talk about her?
We rarely mentioned our spouses
despite describing every other trifle of our lives.
‘Rebecca is smart and busy and a vegetarian.’
‘Why did you marry her?’
I was pushing, poking,
assessing how easily that bond could bruise.
I hoped you would admit it was doomed.
You reac
hed for a pillow and sat up
against it.
‘Sometimes I think Rebecca chose me as a husband
before she chose me as a boyfriend.
Does that make sense?
I mean. I had the hallmarks of husband.
Good education. Decent family. Tall.
I hate to boast but I’m over six foot,
which women love, apparently.
And then there are my guns.’
I grabbed the Carver and threw it at you.
‘Once we were a couple,
Rebecca moulded me into a person she could love.
She had me listen to her music and read certain books.
She taught me to cook.
I was a lump of stupid clay when we met.
She turned me into something.’
This portrait was meant to tell me
everything I needed to know about Rebecca –
how cold and controlling she was,
how caged you’d been from the beginning.
But you curated this Rebecca especially for me.
I walked the line myself:
Paul was homely, a planner, compassionate.
I’d had other offers but he beat off the competition.
Now, the connection was missing,
he’d stopped listening.
I am prized – steal me.
I am desolate – save me.
What we told and what we hid.
In the end I believed myself.
But I never believed you.
‘Do you like Raymond Carver?’ you asked,
picking him up from the floor.
I shrugged. ‘I’ve never been much of a short story fan.’
I stuck to Tanya at university,
chose courses she approved of,
hung out with her hockey friends,
shared bottles of Smirnoff Ice with her until we puked.
And I still stick to her,
joined the company when she said I should,
and now
creep out for lunch at eleven thirty
to help her hangover.
At the sandwich counter
my phone vibrates. It is Mark. Hope you’re OK.
Tanya pays for soups and salad.
She has been watching.
‘You’re smiling and texting.
Please don’t have an affair.
It would be so much hassle.
And I wouldn’t represent you for free in a divorce.
Time is money, bitch.
Plus, Paul’s a babe.’
‘He’s sensible and disapproving.’
‘Which is why you’re so well suited.’
Tanya wears fishnets with stilettos.
She sleeps with men on the first date.
Her mother is a lesbian activist.
Her father is a reclusive potter.
But when it comes to me she is conservative.
‘You’re the good one,’ she told me at Bristol.
‘Let me be bad for both of us.’
I had a boyfriend from Puerto Buenos
with zits and a Rolex
who called Tanya the ‘fiery one’.
He sizzled when he talked about her,
dry-humping me in his room.
Whenever Tanya showed up
he unhooked me,
stood taller,
spoke louder,
seemed to become someone.
I couldn’t do that to him, to anyone –
light them up,
expose their strengths.
Engineering.
That was what he was studying.
Engineering. His father owned a company.
Tanya was dressed as Boy George
when she kissed my Spanish boyfriend.
His name? Mateo maybe.
He wore a lot of merino wool –
jumpers tied around his neck.
It was a Halloween party.
He was dressed as a pirate,
I was his parrot –
squawk squawk, all night long.
It was a funny joke,
except it wasn’t funny
when I caught him and Tanya
laughing and squawk-squawking in a corner,
the point of his sword against her leg.
Tanya never apologised.
She was 1980s Boy George, a cross-dressing superstar,
I was a parrot with orange feet:
squawk squawk.
Mateo melted away, disappearing altogether
along with the other Erasmus students over Christmas.
Tanya said, ‘Remember that Italian bloke?
He had such bad skin.
Fuck, Ana. I don’t know how you could have kissed him.’
I’ve met Rebecca before.
Yes, but that was before.
And here she is again,
your no-longer wife,
a widow in sensible shoes,
a briefcase balanced on her knee.
‘Ms Taylor, hello.’ I hold out my hand.
Her grip is weak.
I am firm. ‘Do come in.’
I have ordered not just tea and coffee for the meeting,
but pastries too,
and grapes,
beads of water clinging to them.
‘I’m not sure you’ll recall, but we’ve met,’ I say.
‘A few years ago now at the Bald Faced Stag.
Your husband was there.’
Rebecca’s gaze has no destination.
Her eyes trip around the room,
books, pictures, grapes.
‘Connor dealt with the financials so … ’
She waves away the notion of knowing
how to behave.
On her left hand, a wedding band.
We begin. First, your funeral.
‘It was beautiful,’ she says.
It was not, I don’t say.
‘I’m sure. Well, that’s the first claim against the estate.’
Rebecca accepts a tea and a Danish pastry,
making notes in a Moleskin of everything
she has to do:
inform the bank, the doctor, the tax man,
the pension scheme, the council;
find out everything she can about your savings,
shares, insurance, trusts.
‘Can’t you do any of that?’
Her tone is changed, like I am now the hired help.
A darkness within me flexes.
I sit back, willing her to continue,
reveal the woman she is.
Your body repulsed him, I want to tell her.
He couldn’t stand your smell.
The colour of your flesh.
‘My understanding was that the executor does it.
Isn’t that what the fee is for?’
The pastry has left a jammy stain on her cardigan cuff.
She uses a fingernail to scratch at it.
I offer a napkin.
‘We can do as little or as much as you like.
I’m here to make the probate process easier
and for this to get settled quickly.
Six months to a year is usual.
Shall we divide some of the tasks?’
I do not see grief in Rebecca’s reluctant agreement:
she is impatient,
like dealing with her husband’s wishes,
his life,
his death,
were nothing more than a chore
instead of a fucking privilege.
Rebecca reaches for a biro from the stack
at the centre of the conference table.
Her hands are lined,
nine years more living than mine.
I never understood why you chose
a woman older than you.
‘I’m so disorganised,’ she says.
She bites her knuckles,
fearing being sent home alone with
responsibilities and paperwork.
You did everything:
paid her parking tickets,
called the dentist when her crown fell out.
‘I’ll send minutes of what we discuss in an email.
Would that help?’
She doesn’t answer.
Her eyes well with tears.
I want to ask why.
You’re not crying about Connor, surely?
He said you didn’t love him.
Tell me he was right.
Tell me how horrendous it was.
But you also said she couldn’t tell the time,
was often late;
yet she showed up here early –
sat waiting for ten minutes.
‘It’s difficult,’ I say.
‘You have no idea, Ms Kelly.’ She clicks the biro.
‘No one has a clue what I’m going through.’
Rebecca was a figure
who stood between us.
But what if that wasn’t true?
What if you,
after all,
were the figure
standing between
Rebecca and me?
PART TWO
Your phone rang as the food came.
I didn’t notice either immediately,
too busy keeping tabs on the neighbouring couple,
making peevish assumptions
about their linked hands beneath the table,
his furtive glances at the door.
I couldn’t make out what Rebecca was saying,
but knew as you set down your chopsticks
you’d been summoned.
‘She’s crashed the car.’
My instinct was to remind you of her life insurance;
I’d advised on the policy.
I said, ‘Oh, God, is she OK?’
I’d ordered sashimi as you had
when I actually preferred raw fish with rice,
a swell of soy sauce.
I studied the slabs of tuna,
looked around for a waiter.
‘She’s late for something.
I have to sit with the car
until the breakdown gets there.’
For a strong-limbed woman,
Rebecca found adulthood quite burdensome;
if she’d not interrupted our lunch
this incompetence would have pleased me.
‘I’ll pay for this,’ you said.
I didn’t argue,
opened up a book
so I wouldn’t look
completely stood up.
Traffic burped along Whetstone High Road.
A pan of noodles screeched in the kitchen.
You lay down two twenties and said,
‘We have something special, Ana.’
‘We … as in you and Rebecca, or as in … ?’
I popped edamame into my mouth.
Too much salt.
‘Give me a break.
She’s late. It’s not a big ask.
I’d rather be here.’
‘You are here.