The Consequences of Love

by Gavanndra Hodge

  ‘Do you think Candy would mind if we had some wine?’ I asked.

  Mum tutted. Dad winked at me.

  ‘Can we have a bottle of Gavi di Gavi,’ I said to the next waiter who passed.

  The artichokes were delivered to our table. A spiky flower in a bath of warm butter. We did not speak as we pulled at the thick petals, scraped at the lip of flesh with our teeth, butter dripping down our chins in a way that was undignified and inappropriate. The morsels got stuck in my throat; the sharp-crusted bread that I dunked in the melted butter made my eyes water. The smaller, flimsier petals in the middle needed to be pulled out in clumps, the hairy choke discarded, although it still stuck to my fingers.

  Mum started to cry as she ate, fat, rolling tears that plopped into the coagulating butter. I stared down at the table and made a sort of ‘mmmm’ sound because I was embarrassed and I didn’t know what to do or what to say and I did wish that she would stop crying before the other people in the restaurant noticed what was happening and were put off their food too.

  Dad pushed his plate away. ‘Candy wouldn’t have wanted this,’ he said. ‘She was never down in the dumps, was she?’ He picked up the wine bottle and refilled my glass and his, right to the rim. He held up the empty bottle and waved it. When Paco wound his way through the restaurant to our table Dad told him that he wanted something different: calves’ liver and spinach and sautéed potatoes, and another bottle of wine. So I changed my order as well.

  ‘Can I have chicken Kiev, and some spinach too?’

  ‘Of course, no problem, that is no problem at all.’

  Sad people are allowed to change their minds. Sad people can do any fucking thing they like and no one is allowed to complain because they don’t know how it feels.

  I cut into the chicken Kiev and the garlic butter squirted up like lava from a volcano, trickling down the bread-crusted exterior, still bubbly and hot. I drank more wine, shovelled food into my mouth, began to feel good again, the sort of reckless, crazed joy that you feel when you know you are not allowed to be happy but you suddenly discover that you are. Contraband happiness. I laughed with my mouth open, smoked cigarettes, stumbled downstairs to the loo, checked out the handsome guys at the bar as I made my way back to our table.

  Dad and I ate zabaglione, spooning the sweet, alcoholic froth into our mouths, sucking it up through the biscuit that was like a straw that came with it. We ordered flaming sambucas, the fire blue, curling and shimmering on the top of the liquid, the alcohol sizzling on the edge of the glass. I crunched the warm coffee beans with my teeth, drank the sweet, thick, aniseedy drink, ordered another. I felt so drunk that it seemed as if I was sinking into the wickerwork seat of my chair. We smoked more cigarettes, lit the amaretti biscuit wrappers so they floated up like Chinese lanterns, smudging the ceiling with grey ash, making the few remaining diners lean back in their chairs, watch and smile at the most fun people in the restaurant, me and my dad. And all the while Mum sat there, looking at nothing, not smiling, even at our most outrageous displays of fun, eating the strawberry ice-cream so slowly, mouthful by awful mouthful, broken glass on her tongue, sharp bits of metal going down her throat.

  ‘Can we just go now,’ she said finally, her voice cracking. She covered her eyes with her hands and her shoulders began to move up and down.

  17

  2015, London

  I am taking a meeting about a new supplement that Tatler’s advertising department would like us to produce. I have been acting editor of the magazine for nearly six months.

  There are about fifteen people in the meeting.

  ‘So, let’s begin,’ I say.

  I lick my lips and taste blood. I put my hand over my mouth.

  I’ve had psoriasis for years, itchy red skin that becomes more inflamed when I am stressed and under pressure. Until now it has only ever been behind my ears and about the nape of my neck. Hidden, like all my other murky secrets. But lately it has spread to my lips. They have become dry and swollen. I treat them with a mild steroid cream, but sometimes they crack and bleed and everyone can see.

  I am still getting up at 5 a.m. most mornings to write, after nights when anxiety about work has kept me awake. Some days the writing calms me, a controlled trance, the words coming like slow honey, and it all makes sense, I can do it. Some days the words are jagged and I want to stop but then one of the girls stumbles into the sitting room, up early, looking for me, and I tuck them under a blanket and tell them to sleep for a bit longer, Mummy is working. They smile and close their eyes. I think they like the tap tap tap sound of me at my computer. Other days I am so mad and pent up, I feel as if I am standing on the edge of a cliff even though I am in a white office with a white desk and big windows overlooking Hanover Square.

  I am more and more afraid. When the phone rings I am sure it is news that someone I love has died. The school call: I assume that Hebe has had a horrible accident. Mike is fifteen minutes late coming home from work: I am convinced he has had a bike accident and is dead. I call and call and when he doesn’t answer I accept my new reality with cool composure, working out what I will do, how I will tell the children, how I will pay the mortgage by myself (wishing I had listened when Mike said we should get life insurance, you should get a pension, why am I always so resistant to conformity, the idea that people might get old in a normal way?). I sense that I am detaching myself from him and the life that we have created together. I do this again and again, every time he is late, putting my love for him in a box and closing it up because it is too painful to keep inside me. I have done this before, I tell myself, I have survived grave loss and I can do it again, but only if I stop this crazy indulgence of loving people who die.

  When he walks through the door, holding his bike helmet, I go slack with relief. I do not tell him quite how far my worries have taken me, but he is learning that whenever he calls the first thing he must say is ‘everything is OK’. And I believe him, I really do. For now.

  I try to control these feelings, I try to not let them show, especially around my children. They are clever little animals and they can sense that I am closing myself off. I try to be fun and brave and silly for them. Fake it to make it. I take Hebe to Florence for a weekend and we eat pizzas and ice-cream, go to an old-fashioned stationer’s to watch them hand-marble paper, spend an afternoon in the Uffizi taking photographs of all the naked bottoms. We have so much fun.

  I don’t want them to see that I am cracking. I want them to believe that I am solid. Even though it is not true.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say, dabbing the blood away with a tissue and applying the moisturizing lip balm that I now keep on me at all times. Then I force myself to smile.

  18

  1991, London

  Our school bags were piled in the corner, spilling over with lever-arch files and scrawled-on textbooks. There was black kohl weeping around our eyes and our pinstriped shirts were unbuttoned down to our black M&S bras. We did not wear tights or socks, just bare legs, shaved, with smudgy fake tan and scuffed black loafers.

  It was too hot. There were three fans going in the salon at once, blowing the hot air around, making tiny whirlpools of the cut hair on the tiled floor.

  ‘It’s the Nymphets!’ Dad said as he stomped down the narrow stairs. He was holding two bottles of wine and had two fresh packets of cigarettes, one in either back pocket. There was a sheen on his forehead and damp patches in the hair around his temples. It was eight o’clock in the evening, still light outside, but we were all down here, in Dad’s hairdressing salon. The clients and the other hairdressers had gone and the basement was ours. We put on rave music and used the edges of our school shirts to wipe the beads of moisture from our upper lips.

  ‘Gav!’ said Polly. She was the sister of one of my friends. She stood up and wrapped her hands around the two bottles of wine and kissed Dad on either cheek, proper lip-to-skin kisses. I thought about how sweaty his skin would be. They stood for a moment. So close. There was so much that I chos
e to ignore.

  ‘This is Julia,’ she said, finally moving away from him, taking the bottles and putting them on the reception desk.

  ‘Hi,’ said Julia, scooping an armful of her blonde hair and flicking it from one side of her head to the other.

  My father reached for her hand and brought it to his mouth. He kissed her knuckles.

  ‘Welcome to the madhouse,’ he said.

  Dad manoeuvred around the teenage limbs, making his way to his chair behind the desk. He turned up the music, closed the appointment book and put it in the drawer. He cleared the debris, bits of hair and loose tobacco, off the green leather with a cupped hand. He lifted out of his chair a little and reached into his back pocket, getting his wallet.

  ‘So, ladies, who wants a line?’

  ‘Me!’ ‘Me!’ ‘Me!’ ‘Me!’

  ‘Me,’ I said.

  I slid my eyes sideways and saw Julia laughing with disbelief as my father took the fat, tightly folded packet of cocaine from his wallet. He opened it and shook half the contents on to the desk, dividing the white powder using his Gold American Express Card, making six messy lines. He rolled a pink fifty-pound note into a straw and snorted the biggest line, rubbing his nose afterwards so the cartilage squeaked. He passed the rolled-up note to me. As his daughter I did still have some privileges. I stood, deciding which line to go for. I didn’t want the largest one; I wanted the one with the fewest lumps. I was paranoid about rocks of coke getting lodged in my nasal canal, even though I snorted water every night before going to bed, just like Daddy taught me.

  I bent forwards and did a line, I felt the chemical taste hit the back of my palate and my throat go numb. I liked the intensity of it, the pop in my brain. I gulped red wine to get rid of the taste and watched as everyone else took their turn, bending forwards over the table, each of them, one by one, in front of my father, their shirts falling open, while he watched and twinkled with deep satisfaction.

  Afterwards we talked nonsense, shouting over each other, no one listening to anything anyone else was saying. When we started chewing our words, when drunkenness began to overwhelm the coke high, Dad got out more drugs. Sarah went up to the pub for more wine. Julia told us about a boy we all sort of knew who’d been caught dealing speed and was going to be expelled, maybe even prison.

  ‘Poor lad,’ said Dad. ‘But he won’t get long. He’s young enough.’

  Anya was washing Cathy’s hair because she had got too hot and wanted to cool down. Two older guys had come down, Sal and Chris, who worked at the dry cleaner’s, and they were talking to Polly and Julia, their heads close together so they could hear each other over the noise of the music. I was smoking a joint because my heart had gone mad, but I had misjudged how much hash to use and now I was too stoned and the music was entering one ear and exiting the other as if there was a pipe that went through my brain, and that didn’t seem like a good thing. I kept thinking that I could hear people whispering mean things about me, a swishy sound like a breeze through palm leaves that sometimes coalesced into words like ‘fat’ and ‘bitch’. Sometimes I thought that people only wanted to be my friend so they could come down here after school.

  ‘Fuck, I’ve got to go,’ said Sarah, standing, swaying from the lack of oxygen at altitude. Her lips and tongue were swollen and purple from the wine. ‘I’ve got English tomorrow.’

  ‘Have I got that too?’ said Anya, standing up and sitting straight back down again as if she had been pushed.

  ‘Well, I haven’t got any exams, so I can stay,’ said Polly.

  ‘Me too,’ said Julia.

  ‘I haven’t got any exams either!’ said Chris, who was forty-five and thought he was funnier than he actually was.

  Sal laughed.

  ‘Have you got an exam tomorrow?’ Dad asked me.

  I had to think for a moment. My head was spinning, a wide arc that felt as if it was taking me nearly all the way around the room.

  ‘Latin,’ I said. ‘First thing.’ I hiccuped, giggled, put a hand over my mouth. ‘Shit,’ I said.

  Dad passed me the rolled fifty-pound note.

  ‘Get yourself a cab home, Chubbs. We don’t want you fucking up your exams, not after all the money we’ve spent on your education.’

  I took the note, dusted off the cocaine, flattened it, folded it in half, found my bag and put it in my purse. I had to do everything slowly, with great focus and purpose. I didn’t want people to realize quite how fucked I really was. I said goodbye in a blur of kisses and arms. I walked upstairs slowly, concentrating on taking one step, then another. I realized I needed to wee so I kept going, up to the tiny loo, which somehow contained all the smells of Dad’s salon – perming solution, bleach, hairspray – even though it was two floors away. I locked the door and stared at myself in the mirror. My face looked as though it was made of wax. I felt so disconnected from the person I was looking at that I was surprised, on pushing at my cheek with my finger, to feel pressure there. I laughed at myself, at the whole evening, the whole situation, my whole life. In less than twelve hours I would be sitting my Latin GCSE, and here I was completely off my face. It was insane. It was hilarious.

  I made myself sick in the bushes outside our block of flats because I didn’t want to use the loo at home. I didn’t want Mum to hear me and come out and check on me.

  ‘Gavanndra, is that you, are you OK?’ she called out from the darkness of her room. My parents didn’t share a bedroom any more. Dad had moved into Candy’s old room, stapled purple fabrics to the ceiling and decorated it to look like a harem, a den of iniquity. Mum was still in their old room, with the pale blue fitted cupboards and the pictures of Jesus, which were new.

  ‘Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.’

  It took all my willpower to make myself sound sober, fresh, together.

  ‘Is your father with you?’

  ‘He stayed out with Sal and Chris. He’ll be back soon.’

  I was still drunk when I got on the bus to school the next morning. Still drunk when I went to the changing rooms, where we had to gather before going into the exam, which was being held in the gym.

  Girls started to congregate in groups by the door, each holding a clear plastic bag containing pens, ink, pencils, sharpener, rubber, lip balm, tissues. I just had a biro behind my ear. Inside the gym the blue crash mats were all piled in a corner, princess and the pea style. Thick ropes with rubberized ends hung from the bars of the metal frame that rose all the way up to the ceiling, ropes that I had never been able to pull myself up. I always failed in here. The hall was ordered with rows of wooden chairs and desks, each with a sheet of white paper lying face down.

  I found my seat. Kate, the girl in front of me, was already sitting down, her body tense as though she was about to start a race. I placed my biro in the pen-shaped groove at the top of the desk. I felt fidgety, uncomfortable, as if a mistake had been made and I had been poured into the wrong body. The hall was noisy with the sound of chairs being dragged across the wooden floor, entrance doors swinging, girls whispering. At eight fifty-nine, when we were all seated, the room fell silent except for the sound of the clock ticking and the shouts of the younger girls on the hockey pitch outside, carried on the clear summer air.

  ‘You may now turn over your papers.’

  The feeling started in my fingers, an icy numbness that spread up my limbs so that soon I was just a torso, with no sensation in my arms or legs.

  I read the passage again. What the fuck was going on? I’d assumed I knew this book of The Aeneid so well. The start of it at least: ‘Infandum, regina …’ ‘Terrible, O queen, is the sadness that you ask me to recount …’ Those lines, that opening section, had always made me feel as though I was actually there, reclining on a soft couch in a coastal palace in Phoenicia, a palace built by a great and beautiful queen, the sound of the sea crashing against the rocks, little oil lamps all around, the glossy Phoenicians staring at battle-scarred Aeneas and his men as if they were a different species. Foo
d, wine, laughter, music, and then the hush, the faces turned, as he began to tell his story, of a city doomed by the gods to be destroyed by the Greeks, of skulls split open with swords and babies thrown from balconies. As Aeneas spoke, as the words fell from his mouth like nuggets of gold, Dido fell in love with him, and so did everyone.

  ‘Excellent work, Gavanndra,’ Miss Yeats had said, more than once, after I had translated my lines.

  But not this time. I had no recollection of these mysterious words, random collections of letters. I looked up. Kate was already writing. I looked back down. Had I translated this section once? I must have done. But maybe this was something that had come up on one of the days I had taken off sick, one of those mornings when I woke up and decided I just couldn’t be bothered.

  ‘Mum, I don’t feel very well.’

  ‘OK, darling, you stay in bed, look after yourself.’

  She wasn’t taking any chances with me.

  I read the passage again. I started translating. I knew the words I was writing made no sense, but I had to continue. I made up sentences that sounded as if they could be translated bits of Latin, things having been done, glittering swords and grey-eyed goddesses, and I wrote them with a hand that was numb, with handwriting that was strange and spiky.

  I finished before the allotted time. Kate was still writing. I felt so deeply tired, the sort of tiredness that never came to me when I needed it, when I was wide awake at 3 a.m. and my thoughts rushed and crashed. I hadn’t felt tiredness like this since … I couldn’t remember when. I laid my head on the hard desk, on top of the piece of paper, and I fell asleep, the words entering my brain so I dreamt of foreign beaches and broken cities and exhausted men who wore armour that was rusted and useless.

  I was woken by the sound of chairs being pushed back, by chatter that swelled out of nowhere the moment the exam finished.

  ‘You are such a show-off, falling asleep,’ said Anya. ‘I could hear you snoring; it put me right off.’