He’s having what he’s given.’
‘I usually make Ready Brek,’ Paul says.
‘Yes. But you aren’t making breakfast today.
I am.
Just go.
Won’t you be late?’
‘I make Ready Brek when you’ve
already left for work, Ana. Every day.’
And here it comes,
the litany of my failures,
the list of times I am absent,
the reminder of all the hours Paul has committed to this
and I have not.
My failed wifehood.
‘Make it for him now then if you’re so perfect.’
Paul rolls his eyes,
goes to the bottom of the stairs
and struggles into a pair of polished brogues.
The smartness does not suit him.
He comes back to kiss the kids.
Murmurs to me,
‘What’s going on, Ana?’
He is serious.
It is a question he wants answered,
not the start of an argument.
‘The truth?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m tired, Paul. That’s the truth.
I’m so fucking tired.’
I drop off the kids, sign them up for late club
and take a train to Liverpool.
Towns blur by –
Stafford, Crewe, Runcorn.
And shops –
Sainsbury’s, Next, Pets at Home.
Then
houses with windows missing, frames covered in black bin bags.
I am inside time.
I am nowhere in space.
I buy a KitKat from the food trolley.
At Liverpool Lime Street station I use the toilet,
buy a packet of nuts
and head home.
Paul says, as I remove my scarf,
‘I got the job. I’ll be the new deputy in January.’
He is perfect for the position,
willing to shout on some days,
but mostly reasonable.
‘Well done,’ I say.
Ruth and Jon are watching cartoons.
I should have gone to Glasgow.
I went Interrailing when I was nineteen.
Tanya didn’t get any further than Calais,
meeting a man on the ferry-crossing
and deciding he was a better summer bet than I was.
Of course.
I wore Birkenstocks every day that summer.
Of course.
Ate fresh fried doughnuts.
Tried to mobilise an interest in cathedrals and fountains.
On the way home I sat with a woman from Denmark.
She was Viking, bewitching.
‘You look healthy but not happy to have travelled,’ she said.
‘Maybe it’s good you go home now.
Or maybe home is the problem.’
The way she contemplated me
as I picked anything green from my salad
was unsettling.
‘I’ve been a bit lonely on the trip,’ I told her.
This despite having slept with a hot
Hungarian the previous day.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
She folded her hands in her lap.
Her hair was grey but she wasn’t old.
She wore oversized hoopy earrings.
‘Loneliness is something we are taught, I think.’
I shrugged. I wasn’t much for self-analysis.
I had taken many photos to prove I had been somewhere.
I’d bought souvenirs for Nora and Mum.
I’d pierced my bellybutton in Barcelona.
‘Sometimes children must embrace this lonely feeling.
To survive. You understand?
You reach for loneliness maybe and maybe it is a gift.
To be lonely and to be OK.’
I opened a book to stop her talking.
Eventually she fell asleep and I moved seats.
Because she was right.
Also, I didn’t want to have to say goodbye.
Ruth is dancing around the dining table.
Jon is following, butting her like a goat,
holding tight to the belt of her dressing gown.
She is singing.
Jon is trying to copy her
but he doesn’t know all the words.
‘Here is the beehive,
Where are the bees?
Hidden away where nobody sees.
Watch and you’ll see them
come out of the hive.
One, two, three, four, five!’
Ruth sniffs a vase of wilting tulips.
‘Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.’
‘Everyone bathed and ready for bed?’ I ask.
The kids continue skipping.
‘Here is the beehive,
Where are the bees?
Hidden away where nobody sees.
Watch and you’ll see them
land on the floor.
One, two, three, four!
Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.’
‘Where’s Daddy?’ I ask.
They wave but otherwise ignore me.
The song goes on.
‘Here is the beehive,
Where are the bees?
Hidden away where nobody sees.
Watch and you’ll see them
come out of the tree.
One, two, three!
Buzz, buzz, buzz.’
‘Stop it!’ I shout.
‘You’re making me dizzy.’
The song skids to a halt.
‘Sorry, Mummy,’ Ruth says,
running to me,
wrapping her arms around my legs.
‘At the end, all the bees fly away,’ Jon tells me.
‘Don’t they, Ruthie?’
My daughter lets go of my legs.
‘Yes, that’s how it ends,’ she says.
‘Buzzzz … they’ve all flown away.’
I leave the office at lunchtime
with a rucksack,
no laptop or papers,
and walk up the High Road.
My cuticles are dry, cracked.
I haven’t bothered with a manicure in weeks.
I walk right by Crystal Nail Designs
to the yoga place,
frosted glass on the front,
everything clean.
White.
Inside the studio
women wait, relaxed into child’s pose,
water bottles and blocks beside them.
The soles of their feet are smooth.
Three minutes until the class begins.
I have eaten nothing.
My stomach whines.
And then she arrives, smiles at familiar faces
and finds a spot at the front.
In the mirror she sees me,
turns,
waves in an exaggerated way.
I try to look dizzy,
surprised to see her.
I am not, of course.
I am here because she is here,
because we arranged our meetings around Rebecca’s hobbies,
and I was certain I would see her.
‘Hey!’ I whisper. ‘Speak to you after?’
‘Definitely.’
She finds child’s pose, cat cow, down dog, plank.
You said Rebecca could drink two bottles of wine
and chase them down with gin
on a weeknight.
I pretended to be concerned.
Really I wanted to hear how unsettled she was –
how utterly repellent.
‘Shall we go for a sneaky cocktail?’ I ask Rebecca.
She looks at her Apple Watch.
‘It’s still a bit early for me,’ she says.
We sit opposite one another
in Dan & DeCarlo,
smiling awkwardly
as the barista clea
rs away dirty mugs, stained napkins.
‘I’ve never seen you at a class before,’ Rebecca says.
‘I normally go after work.’
‘Ah, that explains it.’
Next to us, three teenagers
slouch against one another,
sharing a drink from a takeaway cup.
‘How are you?’ I ask.
‘Oh, you know. Good days and bad days.
Everything ticking along your end?’
‘Yes,’ I say. One of the teenagers is watching me,
a girl with raw acne across her cheeks and forehead.
‘I needed that class today though.’
Rebecca raises her eyebrows.
‘Is work stressful? I don’t know how you do it.
I haven’t the stomach for office work.’
The girl is fingering her spotty face.
‘Oh no. Life is stressful. Families. Children. Men.’
‘Yeah. You don’t miss them until you need them.
You know what I miss? Being spontaneous.
A friend offered me a ticket for the ballet last week
but I hadn’t anyone to watch the boys.
I’m trapped. It sounds selfish but … ’
‘No. I understand.’
A pause.
‘And if that happens again, call me.
I’m not far. I can come over and babysit.’
She laughs. ‘That’s way beyond the call of duty.’
‘I mean it,’ I say, and I do.
‘A night away from my husband would be bliss.
Sorry, that was insensitive.’
Rebecca pulls her chair closer.
It scrapes loudly against the floor.
She is plastered in make-up, false eyelashes.
Her nails are painted with a coral-coloured gel.
‘Not at all. Life’s hard. Everyone has something.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, as though I find her very knowing.
‘I suppose no one’s marriage is perfect.
And it’s only when the worst happens
you appreciate what you did have.’
I watch her for tics, tells.
The teenagers scream and fall into one another.
I remember that sort of love.
For friends.
I thought it would always mean more than anything else.
Rebecca searches in her handbag
and pulls out a breakfast bar.
She opens it and offers to share.
I shake my head.
‘Connor and I weren’t doing great at the end,’ she says.
Something leaps in me,
dances.
A rush of breath explodes in my chest.
‘We were a Mr and Mrs to the world.’
The girls squeal again and Rebecca hesitates.
‘It doesn’t matter now, I suppose.
As you say, it’s probably normal.
We were married a long time.
Three kids.
Life.’
‘Did you love him?’
The words are between us before I can stop myself.
‘What sort of question is that?’ Rebecca is serious.
‘I only meant … ’
She looks at the wall clock. ‘No. I’m too tetchy.
Sleep is a city I rarely visit, I’m afraid.’
When we leave, we head in opposite directions.
I stop off at Crystal Nail Designs
before going back to work.
I get gel nails.
A very classy coral colour.
Ruth loses a tooth,
stands on the toilet seat to appraise
the grisliness of her blood-filled mouth
in the bathroom mirror.
We wrap her baby tooth in tissue, hide it beneath the pillow
for the fairy to find
and conjure into cash.
‘Clean ones make the most. Lucky you’re a good brusher,’ I say,
turning out the light.
‘Magic isn’t real,’ she mutters. ‘I know that.’
‘Of course it is,’ I say.
She pulls the duvet over her head.
‘It isn’t. You’re being a liar.’
Children know everything.
Even the things we think they do not know,
they sense in their stomachs.
What am I doing to my children?
It is below zero.
Parisians walk
with their chins uncharacteristically tucked
into their chests.
Isolated snowflakes flurry in the hard wind.
I hadn’t thought to pack a hat,
couldn’t admit to winter
in November,
the death months.
I buy a cheap nylon one
from a luggage shop on rue Vieille du Temple,
take a photo to text home,
red-nosed, hair concealed.
I remembered to bring Rebecca’s gloves though,
the blue striking against my black coat.
On the train Tanya said, ‘Not your usual thing.’
She fondled them, sniffed the leather.
This is her birthday treat to me:
the Eurostar,
shopping,
steak-frites.
But she is ill with flu, won’t leave the room,
begged the concierge to send up
a kettle, mug, tea bags – which he did –
though the tea was Lipton, so now
she is making me search the streets
for anything ‘with a bit more kick’.
In a café across the street from the hotel
I scroll through Rebecca’s Instagram.
She has not posted anything since you died –
I suppose it would be in bad taste –
so I examine her old photos:
overpriced fabric samples,
rugby matches,
sunsets.
The waiter is wary.
I have nursed a hot chocolate for two hours.
‘L’addition,’ I say.
I will not tip him.
In Paris it is not a requirement.
The French are devoutly unambiguous.
I buy some Barry’s tea
and present my find to Tanya,
along with a newspaper she can’t read,
stolen from reception.
‘Did you book dinner?’
‘Philosophe,’ I say. Tanya nods,
clicking the kettle
as I slip into the en suite.
The shower has mould in the grout.
The water is lukewarm.
The hairdryer cracks up mid dry
and I try not to cry,
even though everything is difficult and broken.
Tanya is back in bed.
‘Shall we get a train home tonight?’
‘Please,’ I say.
St Pancras is warmer than Paris.
I shop in the parade,
have a glass of beer in Granary Square.
I cannot go home.
The thought of it.
I find a Premier Inn behind the station.
I like the purple and yellow colour scheme,
the soap attached to the wall,
the working hairdryer
and the non-existent receptionists.
I will sleep until housekeeping wake me.
When we shared hotel rooms overnight,
I used the toilets in restaurants, lobbies, shops,
so you wouldn’t have to know anything about my shit.
And you did the same for me, I believe.
The fucking romance.
I have watched, over and over,
clips of Marina Abramović meeting Ulay
to say goodbye somewhere near the middle
of the Great Wall of China:
The Lovers, 1988.
They smile for pictures, embrace for the last time.
How did they stick to this plan?
We will meet, and we will part
forever.
Paul catches me crying as I replay another moment,
twenty-two years later in the lives of the two,
face to face again
at the MOMA,
Marina arresting in red,
Ulay adjusting his trouser legs as he sits,
both confronted by something
they once loved.
Paul says, ‘You’re so sappy.’
They have their love, their art.
They respected this with ceremony.
How could I not cry?
I never got the chance to say goodbye.
Paul is shouting.
‘You can swan off to Paris for three days
but your kids get sick and work suddenly matters again.’
‘I booked that time off. And it was two days.
I didn’t book anything off this week.
I’ve clients back to back.’
‘And I have classes, plus a parents’ evening.
I suppose that stuff doesn’t matter.
I’m just a teacher.
“Those who can’t—”’
‘Stop screaming. Ruth’s awake.’
I seize his sleeve but he brushes me off.
‘You can’t just let me do something nice
without punishing me for it, can you?’
Paul throws a stack of exercise books into a plastic box.
‘I’m going.’
I want to say, I can’t. Don’t leave me. How do I do this?
He says, ‘Don’t forget to feed them,’
and slams the front door.
Ruth is perched at the top of the stairs.
She is naked but for one sock.
‘I have a scratchy neck,’ she says.
‘Come down to me, sweetness.’
I kiss her toes,
give her a dose of Calpol and tuck her up on the sofa
with endless episodes of My Little Pony.
‘You were shouting,’ she says.
‘Daddy was shouting,’ I correct her.
In the kitchen I swallow down some painkillers
with a slug of Calpol.
‘Jesus, Ana.
I don’t think I can do this any more.’
It is Paul.
Back again.
Watching.
Changing his jacket.
And he leaves.
Upstairs, Jon cries, ‘Daddy? Daddy? Mum?’
Ruth runs upstairs to comfort her brother.
I can’t do this any more
either.
Paul asked me to marry him in a Pizza Hut on the A10.
We’d missed the start of Winter’s Bone
because I’d missed the earlier bus
, so in a huff he’d refused to go into the cinema.
We’d just moved in together,
spent most of our weekends in IKEA’s marketplace
and painting the flat in bright colours
Here is the Beehive Page 10
