Unravelling

by Lindsay Stanberry-Flynn

  Cordelia is wiping the brushes on a rag when she hears the kitchen door open and Savannah’s voice yelling: ‘Mum! Are you out there?’

  ‘Yeah!’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Painting. What else?’

  Cordelia hears the scrape of the conservatory door against the concrete floor. ‘I’ll be in, in a minute.’

  ‘Have you been here all afternoon?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Granny’s left two messages. Can you ring her back?’

  What’s so urgent that her mother’s phoned twice, especially in the afternoon when she’s usually busy at the shop or seeing customers?

  ‘It stinks in here, Mum. You trying to get high or something?’

  ‘It’s the oils.’ Cordelia pours some white spirit into a jar and stands the brushes in it.

  ‘What’s for tea?’

  ‘Have to be pizza. I’m meeting Patrick for a drink in town.’

  ‘I like the picture.’ Savannah plants a kiss on Cordelia’s cold cheek.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s great. Who is it?’ She reaches over, snatching the photo down from the easel. ‘What are you doing with this? It’s gross.’

  Cordelia smiles. Just as well Savannah hasn’t recognised herself in the painting. ‘I like to be able to look at my daughter while I’m working.’

  ‘Ah, sweet, Mum. Can I do the pizza now? I’m starving.’

  Patrick is standing at the bar and doesn’t notice her at first, but his spiky grey hair makes him distinctive. It’s exciting to watch him from a distance, when she knows him in intimate private moments: his face, creased and bleary with sleep, on the pillow in the morning, his eyes, luminous and soft in orgasm, his body, hard and muscular in the shower.

  He turns from the bar and sees her. He’s carrying two pint glasses, so he doesn’t wave, but instead grins and does a funny sort of shake of his head from one side to the other. She moves between the crowded tables to his side.

  ‘I thought you were never coming!’ He leans forward to kiss her and some of the beer slops over the rim of the glass and on to his hand. She bends down and licks it off.

  ‘Mmm. Nice,’ Patrick says. ‘I’d like some more of that.’

  The beer is sour in her mouth, but she gets a frisson from the idea of her tongue on his skin. ‘Sorry I’m late. I’ve been painting.’ And talking to Vanessa, she could add, but doesn’t.

  ‘Great! How did it go?’ Patrick’s enthusiasm for her paintings is unqualified. Whatever she shows him, he says, ‘Fantastic! That’s fantastic.’

  ‘Okay, I think.’

  Patrick walks towards a table in the far corner. ‘We’re over here.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Lance was at a loose end.’ He stops and glances back at her. ‘Don’t look like that. I know you want me all to yourself, but the miserable old sod needed cheering up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Women trouble. What else is there?’

  ‘Hey!’ She slaps him on the arm.

  ‘Present company excepted, of course, and careful of the beer. I don’t want to lose any more.’

  Lance is fiddling with his phone, but he leaps up as soon as he sees Cordelia with Patrick. ‘You’re here, at last, you tease!’ He puts a hand on each shoulder and draws her to him. Her nose is squashed against his shirt and she breathes in the scent of washing powder. His lanky frame feels strange after Patrick’s heavier build. He bends to kiss her, aiming for her mouth, but she’s been caught unawares by him before, and averts her face, so that the kiss lands next to her lips.

  ‘Spoilsport,’ he grumbles.

  Patrick puts the beer on the table and goes back for a glass of wine for Cordelia. She and Lance sit next to each other on a high-backed trestle bench. Lance’s arm rests against hers: its weight is comforting.

  ‘How’s things?’ she asks.

  Lance is Patrick’s business partner, and when she first met him, his stylish clothes and effete charm made her assume he was gay, but Patrick’s told her his mobile is full of female phone numbers.

  ‘Yeah, great. Really great!’

  It’s a typical Lance reply. There’s no sign of the ‘miserable old sod’. She’s only ever seen Lance with the same light-hearted amused expression. She has a sudden thought that the front he shows to the world might conceal a fragility as great as her own, and feels a flutter of tenderness for him.

  When Patrick returns, she listens with half an ear while the two men discuss their new magazine’s problems: an advertiser who’s failed to pay for a second quarter, an issue with copyright, some material judged offensive by a reviewer.

  ‘What do they expect?’ she hears Lance say. ‘It’s a magazine for men, not nuns or toddlers.’

  Usually she would resent Patrick’s conversation with Lance, but tonight her painting dominates her thoughts. She can’t wait to get back to it – the eyebrows are wrong and the colour of the hair needs building up. The paint will still be wet, but blending new colours into the wet oils will be fun. She might sharpen the definition of the jaw line and the cheekbones with her palette knife.

  Snatches of the men’s conversation float through her thoughts, entwined with the phone call from her mother that she’s been trying to block out:

  ‘The circulation’s up this month’ …

  ‘Your father’s not well’ …

  ‘Those black and white photos are fabulous’ …

  ‘Another two weeks in hospital’ …

  ‘What about trying Beckham?’ …

  ‘They couldn’t remove the complete tumour’ …

  ‘A different image’ …

  ‘He’d like to see you’ …

  He’d like to see you. Those are the words that come back to her. How dare he? After all this time, he thinks he can turn up and she’ll come running. He’s let her down so often. For years she couldn’t even think of that last occasion, but the counsellor encouraged her to talk about it, to grieve for the father she wanted but didn’t get.

  It was her twenty-seventh birthday. She was back from the States, devastated by Jason’s rejection of her and their new baby – a rejection she still can’t bring herself to tell anyone about. She waited at the restaurant her father had suggested for lunch. Twelve-thirty came, one o’clock passed, Savannah, asleep in her buggy, and the waiter offering a solicitous ‘Can I get you anything?’ from time to time. At two-thirty, she gave up. He wasn’t going to rush in at the last minute, all apologies and expensive gifts; he wasn’t going to send a taxi for her to meet him somewhere else; he wasn’t even going to phone with a message for her. He just wasn’t coming.

  Does Vanessa really expect her to go and see him after all that? But then Vanessa doesn’t know about all that. Doesn’t know Cordelia continued to keep in touch with her father. After that time … after Andrew … Vanessa refused even to mention Gerald’s name. But now, because she’s forgiven and forgotten, she expects Cordelia to do the same.

  The two men have fallen silent and are staring at her.

  ‘What?’ she asks.

  ‘I wondered if you’d set a date yet,’ Lance says.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘The wedding, stupid!’

  ‘Oh. No.’ She can feel Patrick’s eyes on her. ‘We haven’t really talked about it.’ Since she accepted his proposal, he’s asked her several times what sort of wedding she’d like, but she still can’t let herself believe he wants to marry her. Once an actual date gets near, he’ll say ‘Sorry, it was a mistake. I don’t want you to be my wife after all.’ There have been other men like that: all enthusiasm, then drop you as soon as you start to love them back.

  ‘If it was me, I’d go somewhere hot and exotic.’ Lance winks. ‘If you get my drift!’

  Patrick laughs. ‘Shut up, you randy bastard.’

  ‘I expect it will be in England,’ Cordelia says.

  ‘Big posh do?’

>   ‘Posh isn’t us, is it, Patrick?’ She’d die if she had to wear a white dress, be the focus of all those camera lenses.

  ‘Is Savannah up for it?’ Lance asks.

  ‘As long as she doesn’t have to do pretty pretty. And Patrick can’t do any wrong in her eyes.’

  ‘How about Vanessa?’

  ‘She’s pleased.’

  ‘She’d design you a cracker of a dress.’

  ‘Probably,’ Cordelia says.

  ‘How about your folks, Patrick? I bet they adore Cordelia.’

  ‘I haven’t met them yet,’ she says quickly.

  ‘You must be mad,’ Lance tells Patrick. ‘My old dear would be thrilled if I landed someone like Cordelia.’

  ‘I’m sure she would.’

  ‘Hell, why are you being so cagey?’

  Patrick studies his fingernails. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Come on then, spill the beans. You and your old man had a row or something?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Take him out, have a few beers. It will blow over.’ Lance seems oblivious of the coldness Cordelia senses around Patrick.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Patrick says. ‘Anyone for another drink?’

  In the taxi home, Patrick’s face is closed and brooding in a way she hasn’t seen before. He’s never in a bad mood. She’s the difficult one; he’s always even-tempered and optimistic. It’s unnerving to see him so different, the muscle jumping in his jaw, his eyebrows drawn. She puts her hand on his.

  ‘Patrick … ’

  ‘What?’ The single word is terse.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Something’s not right.’

  ‘How many more times? There’s nothing wrong.’

  ‘Can’t you talk to me about it?’

  ‘What’s with the third degree? First Lance, now you.’

  ‘I want to help.’

  ‘You can. Just leave it!’

  The silence continues for the rest of the journey home. Cordelia searches for something to say to break the tension emanating from Patrick, but every phrase she considers dies on her lips.

  He goes straight up to have a shower. Cordelia rinses the mug and plate Savannah has left on the worktop, checks the phone for messages, feeds the cat, all the time listening for Patrick’s footsteps on the stairs. Then she hears him moving about in their bedroom above the kitchen. It goes quiet. He’s gone to bed.

  In the bathroom, she takes off her make-up. Her dark eyes stare out of the mirror at her. What’s going on? they ask. ‘If only I knew,’ she whispers back. She opens Savannah’s door a crack and checks on her. She creeps across the landing and slips into the bedroom.

  The street light from across the road creates an orange glow. She makes out the curve of Patrick’s body under the duvet, his grey head on the pillow. They’ve never gone to sleep without saying goodnight. Pulling off her clothes, she lifts the duvet and slides into bed. She lies there, waiting for her heartbeat to steady.

  He turns to face her. One hand clutches at her breast, his arm heavy across her chest, constricting her breathing. His head is buried in her shoulder, the chin digging sharply into her collarbone. She feels his breath, warm and moist, against her neck. He’s saying something. She detects the same sounds over and over again, but it’s not anything she can recognise. She lifts her hand to the back of his head, stroking his hair. It’s damp from the shower.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re with me.’ As her eyes adjust to the shadowy light, she sees his are screwed shut and his lips are clamped together. He’s lying on her right arm, and she shifts so that she can reach to run her hand across his back. She allows her palm to sweep down the length of his spine, circle and rise again to his shoulder.

  Patrick lifts himself on to one elbow. She feels his hand between her thighs, pushing her legs away from each other. His fingers probe the soft flesh, easing the folds apart. And then he is on top of her, and she feels him entering her. He moves, penetrating further and further in. Gradually her body begins to accommodate him. She winds her legs round his back and his movements become more urgent, thrusting deeper with each push. His breathing is harsh, rasping in her ear. With a shuddering groan, he pushes himself into her one last time, and then slumps across her, his body lying heavily on hers. Almost immediately, she hears his breathing change.

  Cordelia closes her eyes but they spring open again. Patrick is usually a sensitive, gentle lover, aware of her responses. This was different. He was locked into himself, his need for some sort of release desperate. Perhaps it’s her. He’s gone off her. He wanted sex, but anybody would have done. They didn’t even kiss.

  Afraid to move in case she wakes him, she goes back over the conversation in the pub. It was the usual sort of banter; Patrick and Lance talked about work. He was fine, no sign of anything wrong – until Lance mentioned his parents. She tries out every possible scenario to explain his reaction, but nothing provides the answer. Patrick stirs. He rolls over on to his back and she’s able to ease her leg out from under his. She’s got pins and needles in her foot and she wriggles her ankle to bring it back to life.

  Ten

  What was God playing at? After all her promises, he’d let her da die. How could he? Yet wasn’t she to blame as well? If she hadn’t gone to Gerald Blackstone’s exhibition, she would have been there when the phone call about the accident came. Gerald and Da. Da and Gerald. The two names wove themselves together in her mind: Da/Gerald, Da/Gerald, Da/Gerald like the wheels of a train vibrating on the track. If she hadn’t gone to the restaurant afterwards … If she’d … She said this to her mother, but instead of the expected homily: ‘If is a little word that stands in the way. But only for if, we’d be happy today’, her mother just shook her head.

  The only way to put things right was not to see Gerald any more. She didn’t need him; she could live without him. Without his mouth on hers, without his tongue exploring her body, his teeth fastened on her nipple, his body driving into hers. Then little Catherine would tiptoe into the bedroom, where Vanessa had hidden away. ‘That man’s on the phone for you,’ she would say, and Vanessa would fly down the stairs to be summoned again to Gerald’s tall thin house in Highgate. Once it was five days before the call came and it was as if her skin had been peeled back to leave the flesh exposed, so acute was the pain of his absence.

  Other times when Catherine came in, there was no phone call. ‘Mammy’s crying,’ she would say, and Vanessa would go to her mother’s bedroom, where the curtains were drawn and her mother sat in the half light, fingers compulsively pleating and smoothing, pleating and smoothing the hem of her skirt.

  For the first few days after her father’s death, her mother carried on almost as if nothing had happened. When she arrived home from the hospital that night, she went straight to the sink and started washing his overalls.

  Vanessa tried to stop her. ‘Mammy, what are you doing?’

  ‘Your da’s very particular about clean overalls.’ Her mother’s arms were elbow-deep in soap suds.

  Vanessa watched in silence as she pushed and pummelled the thick blue material in the small sink. Water sloshed over the side and formed puddles on the floor. She pulled the overalls free of the suds, easing them through her hands with the skill of a conjuror, before plunging them back into the water. Mammy doing washing at the kitchen sink was a familiar scene, one Vanessa had grown up with, but not now, she wanted to shout, not now with Da only just dead. She tried to imagine what he would look like. When she was twelve, one of the nuns at school died and class by class, they had to file by and pay their respects. The nun’s waxen face and sunken eyes haunted Vanessa for months.

  A week after her father’s funeral, Vanessa was woken by a terrible sound. She rushed downstairs to the kitchen. Her mother was standing in the middle of the room, hands covering her face, and she was screaming at the top of her voic
e.

  Vanessa turned and ran. She dragged at the front door and not bothering about her nightdress and bare feet, dashed down the street to Mrs Cochrane’s. Her finger jabbed repeatedly at the bell. A white-faced Mrs Cochrane pulled back the net curtains and peered out. She came to the front door.

  ‘What is it?’ she snapped, her mean face made uglier by the curlers lined up across the top of her head.

  ‘You’ve got to come,’ Vanessa gasped.

  As they reached the house, the screams hit them, ear piercing and shrill. Catherine and Daniel were sitting half way up the stairs, their eyes wide. Mrs Cochrane strode into the kitchen, pulled her mother’s hands from her face and slapped her cheek hard. Vanessa flinched. She could feel the sting of the slap, feel her own cheek reddening in sympathy. Had her mother cracked? Gone mad? It was awful, Mrs Cochrane strutting about, her mother making that weird whimpering noise.

  ‘Get the little ones away.’ Mrs Cochrane sounded as if she was enjoying it. ‘I’ll deal with your mammy.’

  Her mother refused to come out of the bedroom. Each day Vanessa carried in a bowl of warm water. ‘Come on, Mammy. Tidy yourself up. You’ll feel better then. You could come downstairs. Daniel’s been crying for you.’ It was strange telling her mother what to do, wiping her cheeks with the facecloth, pulling the comb through her tangled hair. Every day they went through the same ritual:

  ‘How could God let it happen, Nessa?’

  ‘Sometimes bad things do.’

  ‘How could your da leave me?’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault, Mammy; you know what the construction company said.’

  ‘Lying bunch of no-goods! I wouldn’t trust a word that comes out of their evil mouths.’

  One day, when she had called down every curse she could think of on the men Vanessa’s father had worked for, she said ‘Do you know the worst thing, Nessa?’