by S. K. Perry
On the beach the stones shine like wet skin. It’s good to feel joined to something; when I breathe out, my sadness feels like part of the rain. I like cake, so I nod. Frank points at the ground and bends down to pick something up.
‘Look,’ he says. ‘A yo-yo. It must have been there waiting for you.’
15
About a month after the Mexican food I come to your house for dinner. It’s a Thursday evening. You live forty-five minutes west on the District line. It’s dark and I’m cold when I arrive, so you give me a blanket to sit in while you cook. In the kitchen you’re frenetic, chucking ingredients into the pan and making all your movements bigger than they need to be. Your housemates congregate round the table and you put the music on loud so we’re all laughing over it.
We’ve been exploring each other quickly. Tonight we are the opposite sides of a compass, looking across at each other as the room whirls around us. Other times, I’ve been the needle and you’ve been north: holding me there with nothing between us, not even a breath apart.
You pan fry us fish in a kind of peanut paste with lime. I’m held by the noise of the oil spitting and your friends talking over the drum beats. Whenever you walk past me to get something from the cupboard or to chuck something in the sink, your hands brush across my shoulders.
Later, my tongue brushes over your thighs and you tell me that you love me. You say it in French and Yemba and English. Je t’aime. Je t’adore mon petit cerf-volant.
16
Frank and I walk through the marina complex to the cliffs on the other side, where there’s a flat, wide walkway. The tide is in, banging against the wall where the path drops away to the sea. The waves spray up onto it, tearing themselves apart on the concrete. The energy of it makes me want to run, or roller-skate, or do something fast. We look at each other and laugh. Frank picks up a stone and hurls it into the water. I do the same and we keep going until we’ve run out of things to throw, and then we walk, dodging the waves as they rush in.
After a mile or so we find the cake shop – a counter cut into the side of the cliff – where we buy banana bread and Victoria sponge. We rest on the wall and look out across the sea.
‘How you doing over there, Holly?’ he asks.
‘I’m thinking I need to get a job. I can’t just eat cake and wander round all day.’
He laughs.
‘You’ll find something. That stuff always slips into place. Anyway, look at the rain,’ he says. ‘Sometimes falling for a bit is the right thing to do.’
He puts his palm out to catch the rain and closes his hand around a few drops of water. When he opens it again there’s a little piece of paper folded inside. I take it and read what it says inside: Go gently. I look at Frank but he shrugs, ‘Don’t ask me; it fell from the sky.’
17
Six months after the park date we’re at your house again. We’re running late for your friend’s engagement party and you’re making a speech. You’re tense because you don’t like public speaking and you can’t decide whether to wear your dinner jacket or your kaftan.
I say, ‘Sam, you would look amazing in a bin bag. Please put something on and let us leave.’
You snap at me.
‘That’s not very helpful is it, Holly? I obviously can’t wear a bin bag.’
You’re being ridiculous and it makes me love you even more. I don’t tell you this. I laugh instead and move into your body and put my arms around your waist, my head resting just under your chin.
‘You’ll be so good tonight. Please, stop worrying.’
You are hot, tense. Your muscles relax as I lean my body into you and we breathe together.
I say, ‘Wear the kaftan. I’ll make you a cup of tea for the taxi; it’ll calm you down.’
‘Oh really. And spill it all down me? Take a mug into the party?’
‘We’ll give it to the driver.’
You laugh.
‘Go away, you little weirdo; I need to finish up.’
18
On Wednesday it’s the book club and I’m nervous; I’ve only got through the first few chapters and I don’t know what to expect of the other people who’ll be there. I arrive first but Frank has told Gabriella I’ll be coming and she shows me into her kitchen. It’s thick with coriander and root vegetables and I say something about how good it smells.
‘I know, it does, doesn’t it,’ Gabriella says. ‘It’s a new recipe and I’m pretty pleased with it. Tea? Wine?’
‘Tea, please.’
She pours me a cup from a thick brown teapot and passes me the milk.
‘Sugar?’
‘No, thanks.’
She adds three teaspoons to hers.
‘Frank tells me you’ve just moved here?’
‘Yeah, from London. About three weeks ago now.’
The walls of her kitchen are red, like the inside of a stomach.
‘I commute to London every day for work; it’s a pain but it’s worth it not to live there.’
I think about your mum moving to York, her wanting to get out of the city too.
‘What do you do?’ I ask.
‘I trained as a dancer,’ Gabriella says. ‘But I did a masters in theatre production and now I work in film. So, bits of everything really.’
Gabriella looks like a dancer. She’s tall and compact. Her words are precise and soft, her accent clipped like Radio 4. She will tell me later that her parents were from Tobago but she’s lived here her whole life. She grew up in Birmingham but she doesn’t have a Brummy twang. She says they wouldn’t let her pick one up, and she spent hours listening to the BBC trying to learn the right way to speak.
‘Did you move to Brighton for work?’ she asks.
I don’t have an answer ready so I kind of shrug.
‘Why did you?’
‘I took my son to London when he was eight. We were living in Birmingham and we caught the train in to go to the Natural History Museum. We went down to the river afterwards and stood on Tower Bridge for a picture. After I took it, he turned to me with a bogey on his finger and asked why his snot turned black in London. I decided then and there that I wouldn’t live in a place where pollution turns your insides dirty.’
I laugh. ‘So you moved to Brighton?’
‘Yeah, we moved to Brighton. About nine years ago now. We’d only been here a few months when he got leukaemia. He died six months later.’
I look at her, remembering to breathe. It’s what you do when you’re still alive; I know this.
‘His name was Joseph. He was the one who taught me how to cook. He wanted to be a chef his whole life and at the weekends he’d spend hours making up recipes. I’d put the radio on in the kitchen and chop vegetables for him and talk to him about films and school and just things we thought about. He wrote down all the recipes in a big folder that tied together with a ribbon and we covered it in handmade paper. When he died I used to sleep with that book under my pillow.’
‘I’m so sorry, Gabriella.’
‘I felt like someone had pressed pause, like I might never move again,’ she says. ‘I’d go for these long walks and sip tea in plastic cups from takeaway shops. I wouldn’t go in the kitchen. I ate cold ready meals in our guest bedroom and drank water from the bathroom tap. Then – not long after the funeral – I just came in here, and turned on the radio and started cooking. I took out his recipe book and opened it on the first page and rolled up my sleeves, and I chopped and grilled and seared and fried and seasoned and sobbed for my little boy, and when I had finished sobbing I carried on cooking.’
My eyes are watery.
‘I’m no good at cooking,’ I say.
She smiles and passes me a tissue from a box next to the hob. The doorbell rings and she looks at me.
‘Oh dear, the others are coming. Are you alright if I get that?’
I nod. She squeezes my hand and says,
‘If you come here on a Sunday, I’ll teach you. See if you want to after you’ve tried the ste
w tonight.’
19
Your mum only speaks French and Yemba at home, you’ve told me; she doesn’t like speaking English because of your dad. He’d lived here for so long he spoke it perfectly, but she found the language hard. It was one of the things she’d felt had never been enough for him.
‘That stuff won’t matter with you,’ you say. ‘She knows how much you mean to me. Just be yourself.’
We’re on the tube on our way there, and I’m nervous. It’s the overground bit of the underground and normally you’d make a joke about that, but you keep giving me advice about how to be normal, which makes me feel even more uptight. We snap at each other. I fiddle with my scarf and look out of the window at the trees. They’re the colour of berries and lipstick and rust.
‘Ne te stresses pas, Holly.’
‘What?’
‘Relax. It’s not a test.’
‘Oh please, you’re hardly relaxed, are you?’
There’s silence. I’m anxious about meeting your family. You know this and it makes you angry.
‘You’re making this a big thing, and it isn’t.’
‘I’m making it a big thing? We’ve been together for a year and it’s the first time you’ve taken me home.’
‘Don’t be a bitch, Holly. Arrêtes. We’ve talked about this; she’s religious and I needed to be sure we were serious. Why do we have to have this conversation again?’
You stand up and I watch you walk away down the carriage. You wait by the doors and at Dollis Hill you get off the tube. I let you go but when the doors close I don’t feel angry anymore; I feel sick.
The tube starts to slow down again and I can feel my pulse fighting with it; I need to get off too. At the next stop the doors open and I swap to the other side of the platform. The adrenaline’s making it hard for me to stand up; my muscles are tight and panicky. The southbound tube arrives and I get on and close my eyes. At Dollis Hill you’re still sat on the platform.
‘Forget it,’ you say. ‘If it’s such an awful thing let’s not even go.’
‘I’m sorry, Sam.’
‘Fuck it, Holly, let’s just not do it.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I really want to meet them.’
A train pulls in, heading north.
‘Si te plaît, Sam, on y va. Je veux vraiment y aller.’
You stand up, and we get on the tube in silence. Your eyes are wet. We’re still fighting but I take your hand and hold it so tightly you tell me it hurts.
‘Please don’t cry,’ I say. ‘Don’t ever cry because of me.’
I think about this fight when I sit on my bed at night looking out at the sea, unable to sleep. I feel stupid for asking such a ridiculous thing of you. I want to pummel you with my fists; I want to see you bruise.
20
Gabriella’s stew tastes like home. It doesn’t taste like a home I’ve lived in yet; it’s a home in Tobago by the beach. It’s warm from the oven and warm all the way through: an initial sting of chilli, overtones of coriander, the infusion of ginger and nutmeg that sears the through the vegetables, the earthiness of cumin and something I can’t identify. Cinnamon, maybe.
It’s loaded with pulses and beans and vegetables from Gabriella’s garden, and rich tomato juices that seem thicker than passata and fresher than purée, with tiny lumps of cheese that somehow escape melting and stand firm against the other flavours, like little pockets of punch. And then almonds, which Gabriella tells me she fries right at the start with the onions and the spices; they absorb the oil and taste like crunchy sweets, packed with swirling tastes distinct from the liquids of the dish. She adds in a twist of coconut milk, lifting the heat with its creamy sweetness, and serves the finished dish with baby spinach leaves and fried, crispy plantain.
21
We wake up already tangled in each other. It’s Sunday and I’m hungover and I’ve been in love with you for more than a year. You make us spiced eggs. We eat them in your bed with coffee and Bloody Marys. You’ve added so much Tabasco I choke on mine and you laugh at me. We sit in bed all day, you editing your thesis, me writing songs.
22
There are seven members of the book club, including me, Frank and Gabriella. The others are Ellie, Noel, Danny and Jackie. Jackie is the one who owns the cafe where Frank’s cakes go, and I think Noel is the man from the train station who rescued his keys. Ellie and Danny are both my age, or maybe a bit older.
Danny really likes Narcopolis but Jackie doesn’t. She laughs at him because he keeps trying to persuade her it’s brilliant and she doesn’t agree. Frank asks Noel to read a bit aloud and everyone finds it funny. I don’t really get it but they’re all so happy it’s infectious.
We’re clearing the plates away, ready to go home, when Ellie corners me.
‘Me and Danny are going to the pub now. You should come. You need to help us to keep the excitement going after all these fuddy-duddies hit the hay.’
Jackie smiles. ‘It’s true, Holly; these two must be delighted Frank’s recruited someone still young enough to get tiddly on a Wednesday night. Don’t let them down.’
I laugh.
‘Why not?’
I look around at the others, all putting on their shoes and coats. Frank seems to hold everyone together, like they’re the leaves and he’s the branch, and no one wants it to be winter. As I leave he smiles at me.
‘You need to be more careful with your keys, Holly.’
‘What do you mean? They’re in my pocket.’
I look for them but they’re not there. Frank pulls them out of the air behind me and passes them back with a wink. I shake my head at him and we laugh.
Ellie, Danny and I leave together. It’s a cold night and it feels thick, like any moment the sky will crack again and pour with rain. I notice the air more now I’m not in London. It chafes my ankles between my socks and jeans and I sink my hands into my coat pockets to get warm. In my left pocket I find an old apple core I can’t remember putting there. I try to sneak it out but Ellie catches me and cackles as I go to flick it in the bin.
‘That’s really grim, Holly. How long has that been there?’
I throw it at her instead and we run laughing down the road.
23
I keep your big red cashmere jumper bundled up on the chair by my bed. I sleep in it every night. It makes me too hot.
24
We head into North Laine and duck into a pub. It smells of prawn crackers and there’s an open-mic night going on. Danny buys a bottle of red wine and some peanuts, and we sit at a table in the corner. Danny is tall, white and skinny, with eyebrows that really commit to his face. They move when he talks. He jiggles his leg under the table as he tells me he works for a record label with Ellie’s boyfriend, designing artwork for album covers. Ellie’s doing a PhD in neuroscience, and Danny asks her how it’s going. She turns to me, smiling.
‘He knows everything there is to know about music but try talking to him about acetylcholine and the basal ganglia and he’s completely useless. I don’t know why he’s bothering to ask.’
‘Shame,’ I reply. ‘I really struggle with people who can’t talk about ganglias.’
Danny chucks a peanut at her head.
‘I’m being polite, Eleanor. You ever heard of social niceties?’
Ellie laughs and gets out a pack of cigarettes, ‘Do you smoke?’
‘Thanks. I have rollies.’
We go outside, leaving Danny to guard the wine.
Ellie lights up and leans on the pub wall, breathing the smoke out in perfect rings. She turns to me and says, ‘Disgusting habit. We should quit. So what do you do; do you have a job down here?’
‘Sort of. I joined a cleaning agency; I have a trial shift on Friday. I put an ad up in the newsagent too, saying I could teach piano. I have an interview at the weekend.’
‘Cool. Do you sing as well as play?’
‘Yeah. It used to be what I wanted to do but now I don’t really know. Things are a bit up in t
he air.’
‘The open mic here happens every week. We should come back. I bet you sound great; you’ve got a really sultry speaking voice; I noticed when you were talking about the book.’
I laugh at her and choke on my smoke.
‘Not so sultry now, darling,’ she says, going cross-eyed and whacking me on the back. ‘Get some wine in you quick; we need to lubricate that throat.’
She stomps our cigarettes out and pushes me back inside the pub.
‘Quick, Danny, she’s dying. For Christ’s sake, give the girl some more vino rosso pronto, or we’ll never see her round these parts again.’
25
I just want you to be here.
26
We get through the wine pretty quickly and the first bottle becomes a second. The open-mic night is winding down and Danny decides we should play darts so Ellie says she’ll take us both on. He and I make a pretty good team but Ellie keeps missing the board completely. She blames the music.
‘I’m telling you, I know about these things. The rhythms in the stuff they play here just don’t provide a suitable environment for effective motor-neurone activity. You two must have some pretty weird brains to be doing so well.’
We laugh and abandon the game. We sit in the corner and talk about nothing, staying until closing. Outside I feel kind of warm, but the ground looks syrupy under the shine of the streetlamps and it’s raining again. It seems later than 11.30.
Danny hails a taxi.
‘We’ll do the rounds,’ he says. ‘Where do you need to go to, Holly?’
I’m the only one going east so they drop me off first, on the corner of Upper Rock Gardens. The lights are out in the house I’m staying in, and I don’t feel like going inside yet. There’s no colour on the walls of my room; it’s no one’s fault but it makes me angry. There’s a patch behind the bed where I’ve been peeling the wallpaper off when I can’t sleep. I feel guilty but it’s easier than screaming; it doesn’t wake anyone up.
I’m hungry now and I think about the apple core that was in my pocket. I want to eat. I remember seeing a kebab shop down the road; it was pink, with a man with a bird on his head painted on the wall. I don’t know what I’d order if I go there though; I’m tired. It’s still raining and I need to make a decision so I stand in the doorway of the church on the corner for shelter.
