If I Can't Have You

by Charlotte Levin

  And do you remember? How when I shivered, you pulled the duvet over me, kissed my goosebumped skin, stroked my hair. We shared a cigarette and you said, ‘So anyway, Constance, who was your first love?’

  I didn’t reply. Merely blew smoke into the air and watched the white strings infiltrate the atmosphere. Because we both know the answer to that, don’t we?

  It was you.

  For the next three weeks, every thought, feeling, was consumed by you.

  Meeting you. Touching you. Kissing you.

  I enjoyed the thrill. The excitement of the show. Remaining professional. ‘Of course, Dr Stevens . . . Yes, Dr Stevens.’ But when alone, with the excuse of a coffee or a file, which I’d place on your desk, brushing against the skin exposed by your rolled-up sleeve, leaning forward, heart rates in sync, I’d feel your hot breath against my ear, whispering, ‘I wish I could have you right now.’ If interrupted by Linda or a patient, I’d switch. ‘Yes, me too, Dr Stevens. I’ll do that for you as soon as I can.’

  Whenever able, we’d arrange our trysts, which, as you know, only ever took place in your flat. I’d either walk and meet you there or sometimes, if you had the car, you’d pick me up halfway. It was strange that now we were close, intimate, we couldn’t walk together as before.

  ‘You know you can’t tell anyone about us, Constance. Not your housemate, anyone. If we got found out, we’d both be in the shit.’ I’d always nod in agreement, but the truth is, inside I didn’t agree, didn’t understand. Surely even Dr Harris understood love.

  As instructed, I didn’t tell Dale. I never wanted to anyway, yet I wasn’t entirely sure why. Although, I recently saw a documentary about female prisoners and a psychologist said we all subconsciously know the whys of everything we do.

  To make the process easier, I never stayed over at yours. ‘You know I’d love you to, Constance, but it’ll only make him more suspicious. If he’s your friend, he’ll be asking who you’re with, won’t he? You don’t want to have to look your friend in the eye and lie, do you? And if he fancies you . . . well, he’ll want to know even more.’

  I scrutinized you for signs of jealousy, of you dreading that was true. But you were using your poker face as a mask of pride. I instantly defused your anxieties. ‘He . . . he doesn’t . . . He’s just a friend . . . But I’ll go home soon, don’t worry.’ And so I did. Every time. Except that one Friday night.

  We’d both fallen asleep after sex. Well, you had; I’d only pretended. I watched you the entire night. The way your breath fluttered a strand of hair that had fallen across your face. How you placed your hand on your pulsing heart, the other behind your head in surrender. You looked so peaceful and innocent. I positioned my head next to yours and took a lovely photo of us together. For once without you immediately making me delete it. I wish I still had that photograph, and it angers me that I don’t. But I can still see it. When I close my eyes, just before I go to sleep.

  The next morning I imagined we lived together. Rising early to make your breakfast. Do you remember? How you complained I’d boiled your eggs too long. ‘I prefer just cereal,’ you said, throwing them away. So I fetched you some cornflakes instead.

  On the way home, I popped into Boots and printed off our photo before deleting it. I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was too risky to keep on my phone. Anyone could accidentally catch a glimpse.

  I told Dale I’d bumped into an old friend from school, Mary Feely. Touchy Feely, as she was known. Said I’d seen her at High Street Kensington Station and she’d just moved to London. I wasn’t even sure if Touchy was still alive. I’d heard through the grapevine she had MS or something. Anyway, I told him we’d got drunk together, that I crashed at hers and my phone had run out of juice.

  ‘It’s got forty-five per cent,’ he said, when I’d placed it on the kitchen table.

  ‘Jesus, Dale, who are you – Poirot? Mary’s flatmate, Jenny, who’s a teacher, lent me her charger in the morning.’ I added the specific details to make it more convincing. I learnt that from Mum. Although, when she’d elaborate on how she hadn’t had a drink, she wasn’t convincing at all. I left the kitchen, indignant, upset, which I also learnt from her.

  Once in my room, I dragged the dusty case from beneath the bed. Coughed as I disturbed the particles. The label from our one holiday abroad, Benidorm, was faded and torn. I unclicked the stiff locks, lifted the lid. They were all there. Colourful and sad. I looked beyond them, blanked them out and concentrated on making a space in the corner where I placed our photograph.

  The days we didn’t connect, like the Tuesdays when you were at poker or at the weekends, I missed you terribly. I’d spend them with Dale to keep him satisfied that our friendship still existed. We went to the cinema once, I think. I can’t remember what we saw. There was no space in my head for anything other than you.

  However, amid all the happiness, there was one of our rendezvous that I didn’t enjoy at all. That time we ate pizza as ‘Purple Haze’ blasted out. I leant over and removed the string of cheese that clung to your chin and said, ‘I wish we could go out one evening at least, get a nice meal somewhere.’

  ‘Constance, doctors aren’t supposed to fuck their receptionists, you know.’ You pointed to the last slice of pizza in the box. ‘Are you eating that?’

  I shook my head. You tilted back yours and eased the triangle, point first, into your mouth. Chewed with your lips apart. The pulping of the reddened dough made me want to retch. Though not as much as what you’d said. How you’d said it. But I convinced myself it was born from the same frustrations I had.

  Then came the day of the funeral.

  We were all dressed in black. Apart from you. You wore your pale blue shirt with the bottom button missing, and a minute iron singe on the collar, of which you were probably unaware. I’m sure you remember what I wore, because I noticed you trying not to stare at me in my mum’s black skirt and the fine-weave blouse I hadn’t realized was slightly see-through when I’d panic-bought it for the funeral from a charity shop.

  Immersed in our relationship, I’d successfully pushed the funeral towards a secluded area in the back of my mind. But once it had arrived, hurtling towards the forefront, it brought with it reactions that I couldn’t disguise.

  ‘Are you cold, Constance?’ asked Alison. ‘You’re shivering.’

  ‘Yes . . . It’s not as warm as it has been, is it?’

  I was desperate to talk to you. For you to ease my nerves. But you were busy with patients. Then the opportunity finally arose when you asked if I could quickly grab Mrs Randall’s referral letter before I left.

  Placing it on your desk, I let the blouse drape open near your face. Waited for your whisper to infiltrate me.

  ‘Thank you, Constance,’ you said formally.

  I turned, presuming Mrs Randall was behind me. But no one was there.

  With the surgery closed for lunch, we gathered in reception to await the cabs. You remained in your room. A hushed atmosphere spread. Any words spoken were muted, sombre. Dr Franco sat with Dr Short. Alison was still behind reception. Linda stood talking to Dr Harris, the tissue in her hand becoming more crumpled with each moment. She was dreading it as much as I was. Albeit for different reasons.

  I sat alone. Distracting myself by leaning over the glass table and scanning the covers of the Country Life magazines. (Flicking through one felt inappropriate somehow.) ‘£18 Million House’; ‘What Really Goes On In Private Members’ Clubs?’; ‘How to Draw Dogs’.

  ‘This can’t be easy for you, Constance.’ Dr Franco was taking a seat next to me uninvited.

  I turned to him, smiled. ‘No. It’s a sad day for us all.’

  He rested his fingers upon my shoulder. I resisted the urge to shrug him off and accepted the discomfort. ‘Dr Stevens told me . . . about your mother. So recent for you . . . and no support network.’

  I reached for a magazine, turned its pages. ‘Yes . . . I’m fine, though, Dr Franco.’

  ‘Please don’t be up
set with Dr Stevens. He was only concerned and thought you may benefit from talking with someone. With me. As do I . . . Now, before you say, I know I charge disgusting amounts of money, but the truth is, my chat with Dr Stevens highlighted how I hadn’t taken on any pro bono clients for some years. As a struggling student, from a world very different to the one that I now inhabit, I made a pact with myself that I always would, and frankly, Constance, I’m ashamed. So I assure you it would be for my benefit just as much as yours.’

  He was wrong. I wasn’t upset with you. In fact, I was suppressing a grin at how much you cared.

  ‘Thank you . . . Really, thank you. That’s a very generous offer . . . It’s just that I don’t need to talk. I’m fine. Honestly.’

  ‘“I’m fine” is one of the most misleading phrases ever to be uttered, I find. It’s just a chat. No harm, hey?’

  I attempted to avoid his eyes, but he caught hold of mine and wouldn’t let them go, nodding, until I said, ‘OK . . . Well, thank you, Dr Franco. If you’re sure.’

  ‘Excellent,’ he said, rising. ‘How about tomorrow lunch?’

  ‘OK, yes. That’s very kind of you.’ He patted my shoulder and left me to return to Dr Short.

  I already felt guilty, knowing that everything I’d tell him would be a lie.

  Driving through the cemetery gates, we followed a trail of amber leaves, fallen from thinning trees to reveal a spectrum of grey, ranging from majestic tombs to simple crosses overlooked by crying angels. I remember thinking how even the trees here died before their time.

  As we drove at a sedate pace, I imagined beneath the car’s wheels the extended tangle of bones and earth, woven by worms and roots, as we moved through the hovering souls.

  Sandwiched between Alison’s inane chattering and Linda’s cries, I observed the crowd of mourners huddled beneath the grand arches of the crematorium. Kissing cheeks. Shaking hands. Wiping tears. The hearse at their centre, shiny and open in preparation.

  It’s funny, isn’t it? How we’d all have been horrified if a blackened, putrid Dr Williams was on display instead. Our loved ones may be concealed by an overpriced box made palatable by lilies and shiny brass handles, but inside, they’re decaying, disappearing. The person you need. The person who’d be alive if not for you.

  I know you find such ideas laughable, but some believe the dead show themselves in white feathers floating from the sky. Or snow. But Mum wasn’t a feather. Or at peace enough to be snow. She was fallen leaves, swirling, uneasy, as I walked the path. It wasn’t a comfort. Her watching me there, knowing she was checking if I’d make it to the end.

  As we approached the building, I’d managed to break free from Linda and Alison, and somehow found myself directly behind four emotionally restrained pallbearers in matching black suits heaving the coffin upwards. The effect slightly ruined by one lad’s brown shoes and the uneven dip caused by his diminutive height.

  I held back. Allowed the family to take their correct positions. First a fragile Mrs Williams, then their two daughters. The teenager comforted her little sister, who sobbed with each solemn step.

  The rest of us remained mute, kept our heads down, followed, as the muffled melody of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ floated through the air.

  I made it through the service by thinking of you.

  As the celebrant, who resembled an off-duty Elvis impersonator, delivered his insincere speech, I imagined your delighted face when telling you I’d be able to stay over that evening. When Dr Williams’s brother recounted the story of how his sibling was destined to become a doctor because aged six he’d amputated the arm of his Action Man, I imagined our afternoon ahead, alone, together. During his sister’s reading of that deluded poem which pretends it’s like the dead are only in the next room, I thought about us kissing openly in your office. And for the most difficult part, when the curtains drew around the coffin to Mama Cass singing ‘Dream a Little Dream’, the pain was so sharp, so intense that I closed my eyes and imagined you deep inside me.

  Everyone left the building. Except, ironically, Shit Elvis. The majority would continue their lives as before. Others would never be the same again.

  Standing outside, surrounded by the chattering about the poignancy of it all, it became apparent no one had arranged a cab to take me back. So I lit an urgently needed cigarette and began the long cemetery route towards the exit. As I walked, the leaves gathered momentum and swirled angrily around my feet.

  Back at the surgery, I rushed straight to your room to find the door closed. Pressing my ear against the wood, I deciphered the voice of a female patient, so returned to reception and checked your appointments. Miss Sampras. Miss Sampras was unusually pretty, and I didn’t like the thought of her cavorting around in her bra, breathing in and out for you, dropping her lips open as you asked her to make sex noises while looking down her throat.

  She was in there far too long for comfort, and when she finally emerged, I couldn’t even raise a smile towards her. Thankfully, once her notes came through, I saw her ailment was a fungal toe. No one finds fungal toes alluring.

  Determined to see you before the arrival of Mr Parker, I rushed to your office, not even bothering to knock.

  ‘Sorry, Constance – I didn’t hear you knocking. How was it?’ You relaxed back in your seat, your shirt undone a button lower than usual. Had you released it for the benefit of Miss Sampras?

  ‘It was horrible . . . as expected.’ I sat upon your knee like a little girl. And I felt the upset drain away as you swung the chair side to side.

  ‘Oh well . . . it was brave of you to go. Well done.’

  ‘I’ve got some good news, though,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I told Dale I’m going back to the wake and staying at Alison’s, so I can sleep over tonight.’

  The swinging stopped. ‘Oh right. I can’t tonight, unfortunately. I said I’d meet Paul in the Castle after work.’

  It was surprising even to myself how quickly I wished to cry. ‘But I . . . Couldn’t you meet him tomorrow instead?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very fair, do you? Jesus, Constance.’

  ‘Sorry . . . I . . . It was just an opportunity for us to—’ The buzzer made me jump.

  ‘That’ll be Mr Parker,’ you said. ‘You’d better let him in.’

  Mr Parker overstayed his welcome. Your next patient had arrived before he’d finished, and so the overlap continued all afternoon. Ratched One left, with an unfriendly goodbye. And it was five thirty by the time Mr Hammond, your last patient, was done and I could finally bolt the door behind him.

  I headed to the ladies’. Mussed my hair, pinched my cheeks. Undid my blouse, washed my bits. Wincing as I wiped myself dry with the scratchy paper towel. I then decided to remove my knickers completely and stuff them into my pocket. It was all I had. It was all she’d ever used.

  ‘What are you doing?’ you said as I locked your door behind me.

  You were still sat, pen poised above a prescription. I walked over to you, slow, unflinching.

  ‘I’ve got to finish signing these.’

  I hitched up my skirt, straddled you.

  ‘Constance . . . stop it . . . We can’t do anything here.’

  But your words were futile. You were already kissing me. Your fingers frantic, searching beneath my skirt. Myself, so relieved, content, that I’d successfully changed your mind.

  Sat on your desk, skirt ruched around my waist, bra undone, I watched you hoist up your trousers, button your shirt. After you came, you hadn’t kissed me as usual but reached for the patients’ tissues and dried yourself off in silence.

  You stared at the scattered manila files, escaped documents and a now-open box of paper clips on the floor. ‘We need to clear this up.’

  Squatting, you collected the clips with your right hand, dropping them into the cupped palm of your left. You didn’t look at me. Not as I slid off the desk, pulling down my skirt. Not as I removed the knickers from my pocket and sheepishly
put them on. Not as I fastened my bra before kneeling to help you.

  ‘That shouldn’t have happened.’ You finally looked at me as you poured the clips from your hand into the box. ‘Do your blouse up, will you.’

  Standing, I fastened the buttons as requested, though my fingers were fumbling and uncooperative. ‘We could pick up a curry or something? Get some wine?’

  Your lips curled and your eyes squinted. ‘What are you talking about? I’ve told you, I’m going out tonight.’ You stood too. Threw the box onto the desk. There was the sound of tinkling metal as several paper clips ricocheted back out. You bent down again, the redness of your cheeks travelling south towards your neck, and you began gathering up papers.

  I copied you. My eyes flitting upwards towards your face. ‘I . . . I know you did . . . Sorry. Is that Mr Parker’s file? This belongs with that.’

  You snatched the letter from my hand, causing a paper cut to my finger, which I sucked to stop the sting.

  ‘I’m not doing this, Constance. Having you make a massive issue because I want to go out one night with a friend.’

  ‘I . . . I’m not. I—’

  ‘Look at the bloody mess. We shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘It’s OK. No one else is here. No one will know.’

  I attempted to hug you, but you turned and threw the file onto the desk. ‘But I know, for fuck’s sake.’ Newly replaced pages flew out with the force. A sheet floated back to the floor. You didn’t retrieve it. Just dropped into your chair, which rolled backwards with the motion, and covered your face with your hands.

  I didn’t know what to do. How to stop you worrying. All I could think was to gather the remaining evidence from the floor.

  Then do you remember? How you changed so suddenly. At least, I thought you had.

  ‘I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry, Constance. Come here.’

  I followed instruction. Allowed you to pull me onto your knee, alleviating my concerns.

  ‘I’m a shit . . . I’m such a shit, Constance . . . You know I’m very fond of you, don’t you?’