by S. K. Perry
I think about phoning my parents but it’s late and I don’t know what to say. My socks are wet. I got some flowers for my room but I didn’t put them in water so they died. I feel so lonely. There are four days left this week and it’s been raining a lot. I’ve stopped brushing my hair but I think it looks alright. Every part of my body hurts. I don’t want you to tell me you love me.
That night I dream of brains that chase me out into the middle of road, and the sound of brakes and crumpling metal and the smell of burning.
27
I get a piano teaching job. It’s every Saturday with a little girl who’s about to turn eight and is working towards Grade 3. Her last teacher moved to Berlin, her mother tells me.
‘You’re not planning to do that, are you? It’s just terribly difficult for Louisa; she builds up such strong attachments.’
I assure her I’m not, and she gives me the job.
28
I can see you dancing from where I’m singing on the stage. It’s the first gig of mine you’ve been to and I thought it would make me nervous but I’d forgotten what you’re like when you dance. You’re in a big crowd with the rest of our friends and sometimes you sink into them but I can sense you feeling the beat with me and it makes me better. I move to the piano for the next song; it’s slower, and I get lost in it so when the set’s finished and I walk down from the stage, I’m surprised to see you there ready to wrap me up.
We sit – a group of us – at the bar while the next band sets up and then we dance together until we ache. You look so good when you’re dancing, and you make everyone round us seem better than they are. You feel music in the same place that makes me want to play it and you spin me round like the whole room was built for us to move in.
I can feel the moisture already drying in my bra as we leave and the autumn air hits us. It’s dark and cold outside, and you push me up against the wall and take a handful of my hair and kiss me.
‘I’m so proud of you, little kite. Dancing to your voice is almost as good as waking up next to you in the morning.’
We walk home that night; it takes over an hour but we want to be outside. You say you can’t imagine standing still on a bus. Whenever there’s something to crash into we do; we let the streets’ walls hold us up and our mouths open round each other.
At home you push me into the door as I close it. You kiss me, your head nuzzled into the back of my neck. I turn round to face you and you lift me up and I wrap my legs around your waist. You try to take my top off but you can’t balance me at the same time. You put me down again and we take off our own clothes. We both try to do it quickly, and it’s kind of funny. I’m naked first. It’s a bit cold and I watch you take your socks off and then we’re both there, standing with our clothes next to us. You smile at me and I laugh. You put your arms around me and we kiss.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. The floor?’
We lie down facing each other. I put my leg up over your thigh and you push your hips forward and move into me. You hook your arm under my leg and use your hand too, and I curl close into your body. We move like that, and I hold onto your back and push my fingers into your shoulder blades, curling them around you like the bend in a river. I don’t close my eyes. You find my hand and we hold on, hanging together, moving through the space that’s between us until there’s nothing there, and we only exist like water.
29
It’s suddenly Sunday again. It’s been raining for forty-eight hours and where I’m sat on the beach it feels like it will never be dry again. The stones are all different colours and I wish I knew more about why. This is the kind of thing I would ask you. Instead I throw them into the sea, as hard and as far as I can, over and over again. I stand up to do it. I know you can wish on stones, so I hurl them into the sea wishing for things like an end to global warming and new trainers and you.
I’m glad it’s raining because it means there’s no one outside to see me. I’m making strange guttural noises every time I throw a stone. It’s making my throat sore but the stones don’t break when I throw them and I want something to hurt. I sound like a tennis player at Wimbledon. Or someone with terrible constipation. This thought makes me laugh and then I can’t stop laughing, and my knees bend as my stomach starts to ache and I lie on the ground laughing and laughing at the horizon and the rain clouds and the strange little woman shouting and hurling rocks into the sea.
Back in my room I put on dry clothes. It’s not even lunchtime yet but I think about getting into bed, letting the day roll into the night in sleep. Then I get a text from Frank saying he’s going to take the car down towards Haywards Heath, for a walk by the viaduct at Balcombe, and do I want to come too.
30
You found it frustrating how hard I found it to drive, and how complicated I made maths. These are things I’m trying to fix. We fought – me fierce, you more amused – over the Monty Hall Problem, the one where you’re on a game show and you’re offered the choice of three doors. You know that behind one door is a car, and if you pick the right door you’ll win it. But behind the other two there are goats. So, say you pick a door, maybe No. 1, and then the host, who knows what’s behind all the doors, opens another one, let’s say No. 3, and this door is one of the ones with a goat. The host then asks you if you want to change to door No. 2, and the Monty Hall Problem is whether or not you’re more likely to win if you switch doors, or keep it the same.
31
During my first ever driving lesson I was so nervous I couldn’t breathe, and I had to keep stopping for little air breaks. I’d drive a bit and then I’d pull over to take some breaths before getting going again. The first time I tried driving round a roundabout I was so nervous about stalling I concentrated everything on the clutch and the gear stick and completely forgot to steer, so I just drove straight into it.
You found this ridiculous. You told me you didn’t understand how someone so steady on their feet could be so dangerous in a car.
You told me you liked the fact I’m dangerous. We’d laugh and find ways of making our bodies move even closer together.
32
That day, on the way to Balcombe, Frank tells me driving is just mind over matter so he gets me to drive the country lane part, after we’re off the main roads. We wind down the windows and he puts Bob Marley on at full volume.
I ask him what to do about L-plates and he shouts back over the music that no one should ever stop being a learner and it’s a stupid distinction to make. He tells me to put my foot down and relax. He flicks his chair back and starts to sing along in a booming bass as I turn the key. ‘Just don’t tap your foot along,’ he says. ‘And if you see a roundabout, try not to drive through it; the clue’s in the name.’
I haven’t told him about the roundabout I drove into. But I haven’t told him about you either, and when we arrive at the viaduct he says, ‘You drove well, Holly. You’re fixing it.’
33
I said I’d stick to my guns: stick with the door I’d chosen in the first place and see the decision through. You said it wasn’t a matter of commitment but of probability and I’d have more of a chance of winning the car if I switched.
I said that if there was a one-in-three chance of all the doors having a car behind them and the car doesn’t move, then just because one of the other doors doesn’t have a car behind it, doesn’t make it more or less likely for the one I’d picked in the first place to be right? I said that it didn’t make sense because nothing’s changed; we already knew that one of the doors we didn’t pick had a goat behind it, and now all that’s happened is we’ve seen the spare goat, which we’d already known about anyway.
And I was really angry that you couldn’t make me understand why you’d switch doors. You even started telling me a theory someone had made up about a little green woman. You wanted to prove the point that I was making to disprove your point, because you wanted to show me that what I was saying actually proved that you wer
e right. And I didn’t know what you were on about and I wanted you to draw a probability tree to help me understand, and you started laughing at me and that made me even angrier; and I told you that I hate not understanding things – like how everyone expects you to use pi all the time, as though it shouldn’t even matter to you that they can’t possibly know for sure that it goes on and on forever without repeating itself, because if it does go on and on forever they couldn’t possibly have seen all the way to the end and checked that it never repeated, and if it does go on and on forever then how can they also know that it’s the exact right number to do all the sums with circles with – and you were laughing even more now, which made me even more enraged. Then you asked me exactly who it was that wanted me to use pi all the time, and told me I was just getting cross because you’d told me I’d end up with a goat and not a car, and I told you that I couldn’t even drive anyway so I couldn’t care less about whether I got a goat or not, that I don’t like how cars smell of metal and moths, and that I was just annoyed because it didn’t make sense, and that you had to know you couldn’t just tell me things if you couldn’t explain to me why they were true.
34
Frank told me the viaduct was made of 11 million bricks and opened in the summer of 1841. The bricks were imported from Holland and shipped up the River Ouse, and then a team of people slotted all 11 million of them together to build the tumble of arches we were walking under. He said he’d always liked magic because it was one of the few things that made people happier when they didn’t understand it. That coming to a viaduct constructed from 11 million bricks made him feel how he hoped other people did when he made things float in the air.
As we turned our backs on the viaduct and started our walk back to the car, Frank stopped.
‘I wish I knew the name of one of the builders,’ he said. ‘It’s such a shame they weren’t able to sign it or something; they spent so long building it. Do you think one of them might have been called Edward?’
‘I think Edward is a strong possibility.’
‘Me too,’ Frank replied. ‘I think I’d like to thank him. What do you reckon?’
‘Thank Edward?’
‘Yes.’
And then louder, ‘Thank you, Edward; I think you’re great. We think you’re really great for building this viaduct. Hello, Edward!’
I joined in.
‘Hello, Edward! Thank you! Thank you, Edward!’
We must have stood there for two or three minutes, laughing, with Harris running around us in figures of eight and barking, and us calling backwards for two hundred years to a man who may or may not have been called Edward. We tried out a bunch of other names too, all vaguely Victorian. Frank started to dance: waving and sort of jumping and whooping, ‘Thank you, Edward! Thank you, Archibald!’ at the sky and the bridge. I joined in, spinning around on the spot and whirling my arms until I was dizzy from moving and breathing and shouting.
‘You’re not driving home,’ Frank muttered when we’d stopped and were standing still again, listening to Harris and to each other, panting. ‘You’re clearly erratic and dangerous. I think it’s best if we let Harris drive so that we’re free to yell at strangers through the windows.’
‘I think that’s probably wise. He looks like the kind of dog who could get us home safe.’
Darkness was closing in, and as we walked back to the car Frank started to sing again. I started running a bit with Harris, jumping around and dancing. A passerby going the other direction went past us with a nervous grin as Frank waved and sang at her. I jumped up a little too eagerly and slid over in a patch of mud. I pushed myself back up and Harris rushed over. I looked at Frank and started to cry. He walked over quickly.
‘It’s OK, Holly,’ he said, and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Do you want a ginger nut?’
He started to get the packet out of his pocket but I shrugged him off and shook my head.
‘I don’t want a biscuit, Frank.’
I wanted to be a long way away from him. This strange man, with his cakes and his dog and his collection of broken people, who knew more about me than I’d told him. I needed to be away from everyone.
‘I want you to leave me alone,’ I said.
He looked at me.
‘Shout it,’ he replied.
‘What?’
‘Shout it; “I want you to leave me alone,” as loud as you can.’
‘What are you talking about?’
I wanted to hurt something; I was full of you, full of something, shaking.
‘I want you to leave me alone,’ he shouted. ‘I want you to leave me alone.’
‘Leave me alone!’ I shouted it back, and then again and again up out of my body and I was crying and shouting and I needed the pain to stop.
‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Leave me alone!’
Then I was just hungry, and tired, with nothing else to say.
‘Better?’ Frank handed me a hanky. ‘Come on, let’s go back to the car; you’ll feel OK in the warm. Let’s get you home.’
‘I’m so sorry, Frank,’ I said and I turned to him, and remembered he was kind and had bought me banana bread and was helping me make friends.
‘Don’t apologise, Holly. Rage is healthy. You’ve got to let it out.’
He offered me the ginger nuts again and I accepted one, and he took my arm as we walked back to the car.
‘Where did you come from, Frank?’ I asked. ‘How do you know so much?’
‘I’ve been here all along,’ he replied. ‘I’m a magician.’
35
Danny texted me in the week to see if I wanted to join him and Ellie for a pub quiz: It’s on Wednesday at the Sidewinder right by your house. We’re going to the St James before for Thai food and rum. See you there?
I had two houses booked in for cleaning and a piano lesson in the evening. Rum sounded good. About ten minutes after I’d said yes I got a text from Ellie: Heard Danny invited you to quiz. Need your best fun fact before you get my approval. Make it a good one. Ellie x
I replied: The longest recorded flight of a chicken was 13 seconds and 301.5 feet long. Hope you’ll have me, my general knowledge is not what it could be but I’m a solid team player.
She came back to me straight away: Chicken-based facts are my favourite. See you there at 7.30 x
36
One of the houses I clean is filled with china ornaments: all pastoral scenes with inane grinning animals. They sit on rows of shelves that line the hallway and the stairs. It takes me an hour to dust them, and they smile at me like they know how obscene I find them. There’s one – a particularly perky shepherdess in a blue frilly skirt and bonnet – that gets to me more than the others. She’s trivial, and she puts on this glazed-over smirk to taunt me. Today, when I get to her shelf, I hurl her at the floor. She smashes instantly. It’s satisfying, and I think about smashing them all.
Later on – when the owner of the house comes home – I apologise; I tell her it was an accident and offer to pay. Then I hoover it all up and go home.
When I get back to my room there is a packet of ginger nuts on my bed with a handwritten note. Go gently H. When I turn it over there’s a picture of a sheep on the front. The sheep looks pretty grumpy though, which is a relief. I laugh. I guess Frank finds chirpy farmyard scenes irritating too, but that’s the only part of it I can make sense of.
37
The first night at the book club was the first time I’d seen someone as thin as Ellie. Her fingers were like twigs and where her knuckles made them a little wider her skin was saggy and dried, as though this was the only place on her body where there was any excess. Her clothes were all too big and her hair was falling out slightly in places where the skin on her scalp was too fragile to anchor in the follicles. She looked like a cross between a bird that had just been born and an old lady, and you could see the hunger cramps and the resilience and the pain cutting into her eyes and her skin as soon as you looked at her. I think that’s why I was
so surprised by how funny she was, and when she’d sit shivering from the cold of not eating while arguing vehemently about international development policy or the relevance of twentieth-century French philosophy to modern-day Marxism, I’d wonder how it could be the same mind that drove these different sides of her, and how someone so completely dynamic and vital could be living out her own destruction.
38
We came second to bottom in the pub quiz – mostly because we’d saved our joker for the picture round, which turned out to be an error – but also because we’d drunk too much rum.
We know better the following week. Ellie brings a friend from her department at the university: Duane. He is witty, sharp and tells me he loves comic books. He says that some people find it surprising in a Jamaican man, but he enjoys the exposure of social constructs through irrational incongruity. I don’t really know what to say to that, so I talk to him about Doctor Who. I know that’s not the same as comic books but he doesn’t seem to mind, and we argue over whether it’d be worse to be stuck on a desert island with a Dalek or a Zygon.
Ellie’s boyfriend Sean has a wide, angular face and a voice that slides out gently when he speaks. He’s lived in Brighton all his life and met Ellie at school. They’re both white, and his accent is less clipped than hers is. He works with Danny and Mira, who they’ve brought along from the record label. Mira says ‘fuck’ a lot. She is tall, trendy and acerbic. She sits next to me, taking the piss out of the table next to us who have matching team T-shirts. We decide to get some printed for the week after, and I don’t even think she’s joking. We rise to a respectable fourth place and feel smug.
After the quiz is done we buy pizzas from the bar and sit for a bit, laughing about the questions we got wrong. Danny buys my pizza for me because I’m out of cash and insists I have to try turkey and ham with Worcester sauce and gherkins. The man behind the bar thinks we’re idiots but it tastes better than I expect.
