Teach Me Dirty

by Jade West

  And then I’d put my mouth on him, the way he’d put his mouth on me.

  It was five in the afternoon before I knew it, and the volunteers dispersed, leaving the two of us alone in the hall. He came to my side and surveyed my market scene with his hands on his hips. “Great job, Helen. Excellent in fact.”

  I gestured to some overeager brush-strokes but smiled. “Nothing a bit of touching up won’t fix. I’m pleased with it.”

  “You handled the group well, too. They were eating out of your hand.”

  I laughed. “It’s only because you were here. They’d eat me alive if I was alone, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t think so. You have a great manner. Encouraging and enthusiastic, but calm and controlled.” He met my eyes. “And the most important quality of all.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You listen to people’s ideas and input with a genuinely open mind. That’s a rarer quality than you may realise, Helen, believe me. It gives them validation and confidence.”

  And I couldn’t help myself. I fluttered and smiled. “I must have learned that from you…”

  “That kind of quality isn’t one that’s learned.” His eyes were so kind. “But, thank you.”

  He pulled his cigarettes from his pocket and gestured to the door, and I followed like an eager little lamb, staring up at him like he was my saviour in paint-stained jeans. He took a seat on the low wall outside, and I sat alongside, and as I lowered myself he turned in my direction, enough that my eyes caught the V at his collar and the hint of dark hair underneath, and I felt hollow inside, as though I’d been waiting for him to fill me my whole life. He lit up and took a couple of drags before passing me the cigarette without asking, and I puffed away quite contentedly with a proud chest after my proud day.

  “I couldn’t have done this without you, Helen, I’m glad you came.”

  Oh, but he could. The man was so talented and calm and wise, he could do anything.

  “So am I.” I handed him his cigarette. “I love this time of year. I love painting the set.”

  “We’ll be lost without you next year,” he said. The thought hurt. It smashed through my pride like an ice pick, and I shuddered in the wind. “But I’m sure you’ll be working on much more exciting projects at university. You won’t know yourself, Helen. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you leave all this behind. You’ll have a whole world of opportunities at your fingertips, such excitement, and many challenges, with so many interesting people.”

  And it was one of those talks.

  “I don’t even want to go.” I’d never said that aloud before.

  “A major talent like yours needs to fly free, not be stifled in a small space without the right environment to nurture it. You’ll be happy there, Helen. Trust me on that.”

  “You’ve nurtured it,” I argued. “I learned everything here, from you.”

  “That’s simply not true.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t believe that,” I said.

  “I don’t?”

  I could feel his eyes on me. I stared straight ahead, took a breath. “No, you just want to believe it, because you want to trivialise this thing in my head. You want to pretend you could have been anyone, and that the other day meant nothing.”

  I could feel his shock. He cleared his throat before he spoke. “It wasn’t nothing, Helen.”

  “Not for me, no.”

  “Not for me, either.” He sighed. “I’ve ruined our day. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “You just want to forget about it. I understand.”

  “I don’t want to forget about it.” His voice was weird and raspy. “But perhaps it’s better for you if we do.”

  I laughed, and it was sad and I felt such an idiot sitting there in my frilly undies. “You don’t need to say this…”

  He looked around at the deserted school grounds. The playing fields were empty, the yard between the buildings cold and quiet. And then he took my hand and squeezed it in his. “I’m trying to say sorry. Again.”

  “And that hurts worst of all…”

  He looked confused. “Why so?”

  “Because saying sorry means it’s over.” I closed my eyes, savoured the feel of his hand on mine.

  “Helen, I only want the best for you. I hope you know that.” He squeezed my hand again. “This school, this town, this life. Me. None of this is the best for you.”

  “My dreams are here, Mr Roberts. Everything I want is here.” I wasn’t scared anymore. “What is the point of being afraid of the truth? The truth just is. Like the air just is, and the wind just is, and the sky just is.”

  “The truth is, your dreams are waiting by the sea, and they’ll be better than you can ever imagine, I’m sure of it.”

  “And what about your dreams?”

  He finished up his cigarette and flicked the butt in the litter bin. I’d have been suspended for doing that.

  “My dreams?” he said. “I’m a bit long in the tooth for all that now, Helen. My life is my life.”

  “And are you happy?”

  He met my eyes and although he was smiling, he didn’t look so happy. Not underneath. Not where it really matters.

  “We’d better get going,” he said.

  ***

  Mark

  I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have kept my bumbling mouth shut and enjoyed the day. But I’d been enjoying it too much. Enough that I’d nipped it in the bud before I got carried away. I’d punctured her, and I could feel her bleeding, her smile all but gone as she covered the paint trays for the night and headed to the sink with the rollers and brushes.

  In my mind I’d been doing it for her, setting her free to live her life without some limiting infatuation hanging around her neck. In reality I’d done it for myself, a pathetic attempt to enforce the denial. The denial that this attraction for Helen was taking up root in my guts and growing. Quickly.

  I picked up her bag and coat and scarf and waited outside the canteen for her, and when I didn’t see her coming I held the fabric to my nose and breathed her in, and that’s the fleeting moment the universe decided she should step back into view.

  She looked at me and I looked at her, and there was confusion there. I could feel her brain churning, trying to make sense of this bag of mixed signals, a tumble of contradictions and ridiculous grandiose statements about her best interests.

  I had no real idea about Helen Palmer’s best interests, I was just toeing the standard old line – or trying to.

  Maybe she’d hate university and hate everyone there, and hate the course, and find her fulfilment through a random, chance lucky break, just like Anna did.

  Or maybe Helen was nothing like Anna at all.

  And maybe I should’ve stopped pondering the two women in the same breath altogether.

  I held up her coat and she slipped her arms in the sleeves, tickling me with the fine ends of her hair as she pulled it free from her collar. I wanted to bury my face there and breath her in and say sorry all over again. Sorry for everything. Sorry for meaning it, and sorry for not. I swallowed it down and took my car keys from my pocket.

  “Need a lift?”

  She shook her head, and it bothered me more than it should. “I’ll walk. Clear my head.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  She didn’t even answer, just held up a hand and left me, her dainty steps taking her further and further away, until she rounded the corner at the school gates and disappeared from view.

  I could have kicked myself.

  I went back inside and returned to the hall and I stared at the painting she’d done. I saw her there, looking so lovely in that pale turquoise shirt, so grown up, responsible, talented. I could still smell her, too, the fragrance of innocence on her scarf and on her coat. I’d wanted to hold her. Wanted to enjoy the feel of her as we worked together. Wanted the juniors to disappear and leave us alone. Wanted to hold her sweet face in my hands and peel her clothes away. Helen Palmer, wh
at the hell are you doing to me? I made myself a coffee and pulled up a chair and scoured her painting, every stroke, every stipple, the way she’d used light and shade for effect, just as I’d taught her. And the reality was clear to me – I wanted to teach Helen Palmer a whole lot more.

  I locked up and headed to my car, turning up the stereo and taking off into the countryside. I circled Much Arlock, my regular jaunt, then put my foot down on the bypass to hear the engine roar. The sun was going down behind Merton Ridge, casting amber shadows over the hillside, and I got the calling. The familiar pull of the river from over the hedgerow.

  I pulled into the turnoff, and coasted the car to the fence, taking in a breath of air as I wound down the window.

  Helen, Helen, Helen.

  I grabbed my phone from the glove compartment and called up her details. I typed up a pointless text, then deleted it only to type up another. There was no point.

  I’d just have to hope she turned up tomorrow.

  And that’s when I saw her, perched on top of the rickety old picnic bench with her knees pressed to her mouth as she stared upstream.

  Great minds.

  I stepped out and closed the gap, clearing my throat to announce my presence, only she didn’t look at me.

  “Sorry,” she said, wide-eyed and sheepish. “I know this is your place. I just wanted some time. I thought if I stayed still you might not see me.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Should I leave? I don’t want to interrupt.”

  She shook her head and patted the table. I clambered up next to her and crossed my legs at the ankles.

  I took a breath. “You asked me if I was happy, and the answer is, I don’t know. I like to think I’m happy.”

  “You think you’re happy?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “But do you feel it?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Then you’re not.” She said the answer so matter of factly that I looked across at her afresh. With her uniform stripped away a lot of her girlishness had been stripped away with it. “Why do you think you’re too old for dreams? Nobody is too old for dreams, Mr Roberts.”

  “Sometimes people lose their sense of dreams, Helen.”

  “And that’s what’s happened to you?”

  I smiled, sadly, and the pain in my chest ached in memory. “Yes, that’s what’s happened to me.”

  “So, you’ve only lost them… you could find them again, no?”

  “I didn’t realise they were missing.”

  She pulled a face, and that girlishness was back. “How could you not realise you stopped dreaming?”

  I could have given her some light-hearted answer and changed the subject, but it wouldn’t have done justice to her intuition… to her.

  “Sometimes people break, Helen. Sometimes they break so badly it’s all they can remember to do just to breathe. And that’s all they do. Breathe. Day after day until they can take a little breath without it hurting. Dreams change in that place. They become about that one little breath, and maybe the one after it…”

  She looked so small and fragile, her knees pressed to her lips as she stared at me. Her eyes were glassy but alive, fixed on mine.

  “…and it’s easy to forget the dreams they had before they broke into pieces. Sometimes the chasm between the inner and outer never quite heals. Sometimes the person doesn’t even realise, doesn’t even want to know.”

  “And that was you?” Her voice was timid and quaky. “You were broken?”

  I’m still broken. I’m still alone. I just didn’t know it until I had someone to sit next to.

  “I was broken, Helen, yes.”

  I could see the questions behind her eyes, and she dropped her knees, her hand dithering in the air as she considered making contact. She didn’t. “What was… I mean… what did…?”

  “A beautiful, gifted, vivacious young woman called Anna,” I said. “She died and she left me broken. Heartbroken.”

  “Anna…” she repeated. “Who was she?”

  I cleared my throat and stared at the river as the sun disappeared behind the trees.

  “Anna was my wife.”

  ***

  Helen

  My wife.

  The words smacked me in the temples, and my heart was racing.

  His wife.

  He had a wife.

  And she was dead.

  “I didn’t know…” I took a breath. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry… I’m really sorry… I shouldn’t have pushed… I’m such an idiot.”

  “It’s ok, Helen. I rarely talk about it, grief often makes those around us feel uncomfortable, even with the very best intentions, so I keep it to myself. Anna was full of life, and soul, and spirit. I prefer to remember her that way rather than dwell on her death. That’s often been a lot easier in theory than in practice, of course.”

  “Please don’t think I’m uncomfortable, please don’t.” A brave hand reached out for his and squeezed it tight. He curled his fingers around mine and didn’t pull away. “You can talk, if you need to. If you want to… I’m a good listener, I think. I hope.”

  “You are a good listener,” he said. “You have an intuitive soul and you see more than you say. It’s a good quality, don’t ever lose it.”

  “When did she… um… when did she pass?”

  “Some days it feels like she was here yesterday, other days it feels like a lifetime ago. In reality, it’ll be nine years this coming January.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  I had so many questions, so many things I wanted to say, trying to find the right words, words that would help me scoop his soul out of him — all the pain and the loss and the broken pieces — and lay them all out on the bench between us and love those pieces until they were better again.

  But they would never be better again. How could something like that ever be better again?

  I felt like a stupid teenager in stupid fake clothes, in my stupid flouncy shirt and my stupid frilly underwear, as though those stupid superficial props would have ever snared a man like Mr Roberts. They’d never snare a man like Mr Roberts.

  I tried to string some questions together, wondering what questions are even acceptable to ask. I had no experience of death, or marriage, or grief. Or anything.

  He solved the problem for me. “It was a car accident. She was on her way home from setting up an exhibition at the Birmingham Academy.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “So am I.”

  “She was an artist?”

  “A very talented artist, yes. She was twenty-eight when she died, just beginning to make real inroads in her career. It was her first solo exhibition, she was so excited. And I was so proud.”

  “It’s so unfair. I don’t know how you’d even start to deal with something like that.”

  “Slowly.” He smiled and it was sad and it hurt my stomach. He let go of my hand to reach for a cigarette. “You know what’s strange? What I think about sometimes?”

  I shook my head.

  “I was lucky enough to know Anna for ten wonderful years before she passed, and I always try to remind myself just how lucky I was. But now, every so often, I realise that soon I’ll have been without her for longer than I was with her. And that seems so strange to me.”

  “That’s beautiful, that you focus on how lucky you were.” And it was beautiful. He was beautiful. Even his pain was beautiful.

  He met my eyes, and he was so unguarded, so open and vulnerable, and in that one moment all the air around me seemed to disappear. “Those nights after Anna died, the sun would go down and the house would seem so lonely then, so quiet. I felt like I’d die from the pain before the sun came back up. But then one night it occurred to me that grief is the ultimate price we pay for love. And to grieve so hard means that you have loved so much, so very much. And I’d grieve all over again, die every single night without question, rather than have lost out on loving a woman like Anna.
She was worth it, to love so intensely was worth it. A love like that is worth any price.” I pictured him staring out of the window at the rain, those fleeting moments I’d been watching as his guard came down, always watching. And now I knew.

  I could feel the tears welling up. I tried to hide it, but a man like Mr Roberts sees everything, knows everything.

  “I’m sorry.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “It’s okay.”

  “I think I’ve made you cry more than enough just lately.” He smiled, and it made me smile through the tears. “I’m alright, Helen, really. It’s been a long time.” I felt so good there, held against his side, his arm so strong around me. I closed my eyes and listened to the river, and felt his lips press to the top of my head. “It feels nice to have a friend. Thank you.”

  I leaned my head against his shoulder. “You’re welcome.”

  “Maybe it’s about time I started dreaming again.”

  “What will you dream about?”

  He shrugged. “That will take some thought. I’ll let you know when I know.”

  “Please do.” I wanted to say so much more, ask him about life, the universe and everything that made up Mark Roberts. What he liked to eat, where he went on holiday, how he knew Anna was the one for him. If he’d ever had a pet and what its name was. Whether he had an innie or an outie belly button. If he could ever love me. Things any real friend should know.

  The bleeping from my pocket put paid to all of that. I pulled out my phone to read the message.

  Dad: Are you taking the piss? Five o’clock finish you said. Your dinner is going cold.

  I tapped out a reply.

  Sorry. We ran over time. Put dinner in oven, I’ll have it later.

  Dad: Get home, Helen.

  “Everything ok?” Mr Roberts wasn’t looking at my handset, he was looking at me.

  “Only my dad. I have to go.”

  And just like that he freed me from his grasp and pushed himself from the bench, then reached for my hand to help me down. I stood, awkward and mute, wishing he’d kiss me again, or hold me again, or anything.