by S. K. Perry
‘You see,’ he says. ‘I know a lot about pizza.’
‘Shame you don’t know more about current affairs,’ Mira says. Danny is indignant.
‘You shouldn’t be laughing at me, Holly; I just bought you dinner!’
We get pissed, and it’s Duane who suggests we walk down to the beach. We get our stuff together and go outside. It’s a quiet walk. The town is asleep and the noise of the waves makes the silence feel padded, like we’re under the sea or something. I don’t know, we’re pretty drunk.
On the beach, the big wheel looms up and there’s a little bar flashing lasers out onto the stones. To my right the pier glitters. It’s only really dark when you look out to sea and – under the surface – it could be hiding anything.
Duane and Mira walk down to the water’s edge to paddle and check out the temperature. Soon we’re all down there, kicking water at each other and laughing. I don’t know who does it first but we pull off our clothes and run in properly, the shock of it wearing down to a numbness, and then I’m floating on my back laughing as Sean tries to pull Ellie in.
I stay like that, trying to hold my body as still as I can. It’s dark and I can’t see the water around me. When I put my ears under the surface I hear nothing except the rustle of my blood moving round my body. It sounds like someone rolling over between clean, crisp sheets in bed at night. The coast, which has drifted further away is sprinkled with yellow and white, and outwards – to the edge of the sea – there is only heavy, sooty sky. I think about what would happen if I decided to stay here, where the water would wash me to. I feel calm so I breathe all the way out and let my lungs fill back up slowly. I don’t need to be anything here; I am held by the salt, and the sea, and the thick, black sky, and none of it minds who I am. I let the sadness in slowly, as the cold eases out of my bones, and my body fills up with everything I’ve been pushing away. I start to cry, and it makes my body fold, so I roll over onto my front and put my face into the water. I cry straight into it, holding my breath, but then I start to shake so I open my mouth and I choke on the sea. I’ve lost the thread of the conversation and the others are laughing at a joke I’ve missed. I push myself deeper under the surface and open my eyes into the sting of it. It’s dark inside the water: just empty space and the place in my throat where I choke on memories of you. I am somewhere it hurts to be but it would be such an effort to drown; my body wants so much to keep me up and I’m tired, too tired to keep myself out of the air. I don’t know when I got cold but my head breaks the surface of the water and my teeth are chattering. Mira swims over to where I’ve been floating.
‘Holly? Come on; you’re freezing. Let’s go get dry.’
She takes my hand and pulls me onto my back, kicks us towards the shore. I don’t say anything but I’m still crying a bit. It’s cold enough to pretend I’m just shivering but she doesn’t let go of my fingers, like I’m a child and she knows I’m scared. In the shallow water I stand up and cough out some of the salt. She puts a hand on my back.
‘It’s OK, honey, let’s get you out. Let’s get you warm.’
The boys have followed us back, laughing; they haven’t noticed what’s happening. We’re all shivering, we scrabble up the beach to where Ellie’s sat with our clothes and get dressed. I need to get it together: repair the edges where you crept in and pushed me apart.
‘You OK, pal?’ she asks.
I nod, and flop back onto the stones to look at the sky. She lies down next to me and puts an arm around me. Mira hugs the other side and Danny spots us,
‘Look at these three having a little cuddle. This calls for a bundle.’
Everyone piles on top and I’m crushed under them. The stones push into my back and I’m part of the beach, sinking into it, into them: soggy and laughing.
We sit back up, huddling together, and Duane goes with Mira to get coffees to warm us up before we walk home. They’re easy, flicking stones into the sea and swatting at each other’s jibes like the sugar spill from a doughnut. I feel safe with them. I play the game, say the right things, laugh at the right moments. Sometimes I feel happy in the places I’m supposed to. I wonder how much they’re hiding too.
Before we go, Mira says she thinks she knows someone else who’d want me to teach them piano and takes my number to pass on. I watch her and Danny chatting and wonder if they’re together. Ellie hugs me when we leave. I guess she knows this game too. I say, ‘See you soon.’
39
When I was a child I made houses out of Duplo. I spent hours thinking about where the fridge should go, so that my little Duplo families wouldn’t be in the way of one another if someone was washing up and someone else wanted to open the fridge. Where to put the beds and the bathroom and the flowers in the gardens and which colour bricks the different rooms should be, and when I was sure that I’d made the perfect house, I’d move everyone in and spend days giving them lives, and they’d become completely real until – one day – I started to believe that maybe I was a little Duplo person and God was just someone playing with her toys like me, and that we weren’t real but were dolls or something, just in someone’s head; and then I found myself completely amazed at the size of that person’s imagination that they could hold the stories of so many of us as well as our toys, in so many countries.
Then it’d be time to put the Duplo family away and I’d actually sob at this point because I felt like I was killing my little Duplo people and I was so worried that one day the girl in heaven who was playing with us would stop wanting to, and then the world would end. And that idea was so painful for me that I’d draw pictures of the trees and close my eyes and pretend to be sitting on a cliff or be a bird or something, and I’d always calm down again. This was just when I was a child, so I think with that level of worry over Duplo, I was always going to find sad things overwhelming.
40
There’s a roof terrace on the top of Frank’s house where I go on Thursday nights. That’s when he hosts the drawing class downstairs so I know I’ll always find him there, and I sit in the sky and wait for him. Frank’s building is buried into the streets that climb up from the shore so there’s only a slip of the coast in view, but you can feel the salt in the air and hear the seagulls and the waves.
I sit wrapped up in a blanket reading John Ashbery, or listening to the news, or practising the French grammar I’m trying to re-teach myself from school. When everyone’s left he comes up to join me and tells me stories: about magic tricks where he’d make Ian fly over the crowd, or the little nifty ones that were his favourites, like conjuring ice into a drink or turning scrambled eggs fried. He always catches me unaware with a little flourish of magic mid-story; tonight he pulls candles out of the air as it gets dark and blows on them to light them.
It’s cold, and he’s brought me up an extra pair of socks from a huge bag he keeps on a hook by the ladder that leads up and outside, and a box-baked camembert, and we sit huddled by a big heater, pushing through the cold until our bodies get warm and sleepy in the way that makes your mind wander to ideas you wouldn’t think of if you were inside or it was daytime.
We’re sitting up there in deckchairs and he points out the stars. He tells me to come here whenever I feel full of holes, because from this far away the stars look even smaller than it’s possible for a person to feel.
He knows all the names of the constellations but not which is which, and sometimes he makes the names up anyway. Tonight he tells me I should take this approach to my life: point at it and give it a name. He says, ‘What matters is making a decision. Now tonight the important decision is mulled cider or ginger tea. But don’t worry, because whatever you choose, we can always have the other one later on.’
I choose the ginger and stir in a spoonful of honey.
‘Ah, we need a fork for the camembert,’ Frank says. ‘Keep stirring for a bit, Holly. A little longer. And stop.’
I pull the spoon out from the tea and it’s turned into a fork.
‘How did you d
o that?’
I don’t want to get sentimental about Frank, Sam, because he does have really bad road rage and a tendency to drink too much and fall asleep in the middle of an argument when he knows he isn’t making any sense, and actually he is really bad at drawing, and he and I quite often disagree about books, and in many ways Frank is just another Frank. But he really knows how to listen and to answer and he just laughs the whole time and really cares about people and tells really good stories that go with red wine and cheese. He does magic too, and these days I need to have something to believe in.
Frank asks me if I believe in God. I say I’m not too sure and we speak about how he’s a Jew and a little bit about my Duplo idea, although I don’t think that at all anymore and we laugh about it but we’re a bit sad too, maybe because the world does sometimes feel like it’s going to end. We talk about you; I’ve told them now, and he gives me another blanket and a piece of cake.
We sit quietly for a while, and around 10 p.m. Danny arrives. He’s come straight from work and brings a newspaper he’s picked up in the Co-op. Sometimes Ellie comes too; sometimes it’s just me and Frank. I slot into his evening along grooves that feel much older than just a few months. I say, ‘You shouldn’t work so late, Danny DeVito. You’ve missed the sunset.’
‘I always miss the sunset,’ Danny replies.
‘Well exactly!’ says Frank. ‘Have a beer.’
Frank reads us the headlines. Perched on the top of a building it feels like we could see the other side of the world if we tried hard enough. We talk about whether it’s possible for peace to exist anywhere. The paper is full of the Middle East and revolution in Egypt. Firing has intensified rapidly in Gaza, and Frank’s face is sad in a way I rarely see on him.
‘I spent a year in Israel; I went to practise my Hebrew,’ Frank says. He puts the paper down and stands up. He walks to the edge of the roof and looks out over the town.
‘My family survived the Holocaust, and now there’s me – Jewish and gay – a double whammy. But my life is filled with all this joy. What can I do with all that, of surviving, when a generation later there’s another people, another family being jerked apart by power and bloodlines. It makes me so angry.’
He turns back to us.
‘Peace isn’t as effective as bloodshed,’ Danny says. ‘You know that, Frank. Real revolution means we all have to kill or die and that it isn’t a choice of ideology but of survival.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Frank says. ‘It’s easy for you to say things like that when you’re sat here safe with a beer in your hand, Danny. It would seem less impressive to be a radical if you had a gun in your face or soldiers attacking girls on your street.’
I read a lot of stuff I get from Danny: articles and commentaries and poems. I sit in the Jubilee Library, or in the internet cafe up by the station, and read the emails he sends me with bits of stuff in. I send him things back. We disagree a lot of the time but I find it interesting. Sometimes the things he says remind me of you. Now he’s shaking his head at Frank.
‘The West is too embroiled in the power games and armament of so-called terrorists for me not to already be complicit in that. I’m not trying to be a radical but to acknowledge my part in what’s happening. Sometimes we have to challenge our own complacency.’
I don’t know if this is something you would say. I don’t feel complacent but my toes are cold.
41
We celebrate our second anniversary on the balcony of your new flat. You’ve paid the deposit with the advance from your new job and you haven’t got furniture yet, or had time to unpack. We kiss on the bare mattress you’ve put on the floor.
Your mum calls while we wait for a takeaway to arrive and we put her on speakerphone.
‘Ta propre maison: ça m’a rendu très fière. And how is your music, Holly Moon? Have you written me that song yet? Sam, dites-lui. Tu as ta propre maison; je voudrais ma propre chanson.’
I laugh.
‘It’s written. Has Sam not played it to you yet? I’ll give it to him next time he comes home.’
‘Quoi! Ce n’est pas juste. You’ve never written a song for me.’
Your sister chimes in, ‘Come home with him, Holly. You can sing it to Mum yourself.’
We say goodnight.
‘Bisous. Fais de beaux rêves.’
The food arrives and we sit outside to eat it with plastic cutlery straight from the silver-foil containers. We have noodles and crispy beef and chicken in black-bean sauce and we eat slowly. I love this game we play, eating in tiny bites, swallowing, stretching out the time until we take off our clothes on your bed. It surprises me sometimes, that even after this long we still take mouthfuls of each other so urgently.
That night you tell me this is the beginning of the future. You own a little piece of the city now, and one day you want to own it with me. You tell me you want to have children: twins, a girl and a boy. If not here then in another house: a family we can watch fly. I laugh at you.
‘Not now,’ you say. ‘I know not now. But we have forever to dream about, don’t we? I love this forever with you. You are so beautiful, little kite.’
42
Later, I walk halfway home with Danny. I ask him about work.
‘What kind of music do you do the artwork for?’
‘It’s a mixture,’ he says. ‘I mostly work on garage and grime. But lots of different stuff really. You’re a singer, aren’t you? I found some of your stuff online.’
‘You googled me? Danny that is stalker activity.’
‘I liked it; you have a great voice. And I google everyone so don’t be flattered.’
‘You’re an indiscriminate stalker, sure, like that makes it better.’
We laugh.
‘How are you doing, Holly?’ he says. ‘Stuff must be tough.’
I don’t know the answer to this, so I smile, and shrug, and offer him a mint.
43
Every time I think about the future I feel like I’m inside out, and my skin gets clammy. I know I can’t run away to the sea to live in a rented room with a single bed and a kettle forever. But I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, and it feels like all the things I knew for sure are falling away.
There are moments where I sit on the floor between my bed and the wall where I’ve scratched the paper away, and I can feel a hole pushing through me from the carpet to the ceiling, like I’ve lost this dream and lost all this stuffing that the dream had filled me with, and I’ve lost you too.
And that’s the bit that makes me feel as though the hole going through me doesn’t exist, because I don’t even feel like I have a body anymore. I sit here on the floor of my room below the window and the view of the sky and feel like I am nothing.
44
It’s Noel’s turn to host the book club and we do it at the end of October. Noel has seven shirts that are exactly the same and he wears one of them every day. He lives in a little flat with his partner Joan, who cooks for us but doesn’t stay for the discussions. I’ve slipped outside onto the patio for a cigarette halfway through the conversation and meet her there, smoking too. She nods as I light up and says, ‘You ever been fishing?’
I tell her I haven’t and she says that she and Noel go at the weekend sometimes. She says to let them know if I fancy it, that it’s a nice way to pass the day: smoking and fishing. I thank her, say that’d be nice and go back in to finish talking about Moby Dick. I’m playing that game again, the one where I smile and move my hands to show I’m having a good time.
Frank sits next to me, muttering a commentary in my ear. He watches as the argument gets more and more heated and only joins in when it reaches the height of controversy, pushing Noel and Gabriella’s disagreement over the edge.
She and I wash up together in the kitchen afterwards.
‘When are you coming over to learn how to cook?’ she asks. ‘Sundays. Any Sunday. Come every week if you want.’
I haven’t seen Gabriella sinc
e the first book club. I look at her and she smiles, and I wonder if she’s known about you all along, or if Frank did anyway, and he told her.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Thanks. That sounds good.’
We leave together, planning recipes for the weekend. She offers Frank a lift home, but he shakes his head.
‘I need the walk to calm me down. These nights get me very excited.’
I watch him pace down the street away from us with Harris, and think about how he found me at exactly the moment I needed him to.
45
Autumn has sapped the trees of their chlorophyll and stained them with dying colours: beautiful bruising as they fade away. It’s Halloween next week and we’re making buckwheat pancakes with caramelised onions and goats cheese and a rich beetroot soup in Gabriella’s kitchen. At first, I sit on the surface of her kitchen worktop and watch her cook. She starts to give me tasks, and soon I’m helping her with cutting and peeling.
I’m in charge of making sure the soup doesn’t burn, tasting it for flavour. I sing along quietly to her radio and she dances as she chops. When we sit and eat together she tells me stories about Joseph and I talk about you. It’s like uncorking a bottle of champagne. Neither of us can stop; memories trickle out in bubbles and we talk until it’s been dark for hours. She drives me home with a Tupperware full of soup in my lap.
46
On Bonfire Night we watch the fireworks from Frank’s roof. Noel heats up jacket potatoes on a little gas stove we’ve taken up there and hands them round in silver foil. Jackie’s brought the leftover cake from her cafe and we eat it after the potatoes, pushing sweet sticky lumps of brownie into our mouths. Frank’s wired a little CD player up, and Frank Sinatra bellows out over the rooftops until the night takes over and fireworks start shooting round us in all directions. I stand there and think about you. Last year we spent Bonfire Night at different parties and at exactly the same time we texted each other: I love you. I remember thinking it was because the same sky was stretched over both of us. Tonight I want to peel it away and fall off the earth. I get my phone out to text you again but I don’t know what I’d say.
