Reality, Reality

by Jackie Kay

  There was bread flavoured with ale. There were plenty bannocks, gilded peacocks and festooned boar’s head, tarts filled with veal and dates, Shetland lamb cooked with fresh coriander, seared salmon with walnuts and thyme, stuffed roast suckling pig, goose cooked in a sauce of grapes and garlic, stewed cabbage flavoured with cinnamon and cloves and grilled asparagus.

  For dessert there was fruited custard in huge friendly-faced, born-again pies. We asked our guests to bring small cakes and pile them in the centre of a table. When everyone has finished eating, but not yet finished drinking, Rose stands up and takes my hand and leads me to the table with cakes. She stands around one side of it, fine and sturdy in her kilt, and I stand over the other. We lean towards each other and we kiss, a long, soft, melt of a kiss, and after a minute’s lovely silence, everyone cheers. Someone shouts, ‘Hurra fir da bride and da bridegroom.’ The fiddlers start playing faster and faster and people get up and dance in the middle of the hall. Choocking and whooping and spinning. Hooch! Da whisky wis flowin oot da door.

  By the time our wedding feast wis over everybody wis jist pleepin. ‘There are days and there are days,’ Rose says to me when we drive off for our honeymoon at the Buness House in Unst where we will walk and talk and go over and over our day, telling it in the present tense, in the past. ‘Oh, Rose,’ I say. ‘What if we still hadn’t had it yet and we still had our wedding day to look forward to?’ Rose groans and shudders, reeling. ‘Oh, I’d do it all over again, again and again and again!’ she laughs, helplessly. ‘I swear the stars look happy for us,’ I say to Rose. ‘Grace,’ she says. ‘Oh my dear Grace.’

  Bread Bin

  It’s taken me until the age of forty-nine to have really wonderful sex. I think that’s not bad. Some people don’t experience good sex until they are sixty. I often see secretly smiling sixty-year-olds when I’m out and about. Then again, some people never have it at all. My grandmother told me she had never had an orgasm. She would discuss sex with a frankness that surprised and embarrassed my mother. Maggie, her good pal, had described an orgasm to her. Maggie says it’s kind of a spasm, a great spasm that shakes and shakes the core of you till you are good for nothing. Like a tree in a wild winter storm, a good orgasm could actually uproot you, Maggie had told my grandmother. That was why she left her husband of forty years and ran off with a woman, a womanly woman actually, my grandmother said, with more than a hint of wistfulness. ‘The first orgasm of Maggie’s entire life uprooted her! She lives down South now!’ ‘Oh what a shame,’ I said, delighted. My grandmother nodded, sipping her tea, a little sorry for herself. Then she snapped out of it. ‘It is not one of my biggest regrets – never having an orgasm – if you’re good for nothing afterwards,’ she said sensibly. Most of her life, she said – her proud neck shaking a little for double emphasis – she was good for something. ‘Even my bread bin was clean!’ she said, half-angrily, like some women had got away with having dirty bread bins. ‘Even the washing on my line was colour coordinated!’ Indignant now, like other women had got away with mixing colours up on the line! I tried to look admiring. I was in my early forties when we had that conversation and was beginning to think I’d never find it either. ‘What’s all the fuss about?’ I’d say to pals in similar situations out for consoling meals in romantic restaurants surrounded by sixty-year-olds in love. ‘Am I missing something?’

  For every lover I’ve ever had there’s been one small defining sexual moment. There was Angie. We were seventeen. I was riding my Honda 50 to her tenement flat in Springburn, Glasgow. (A Honda 50 is maybe not so sexy as a Harley-Davidson, but it felt pretty damn sexy to me at the time.) I was wearing a yellow helmet, dark jeans and a leather jacket. Angie lived on the fourth floor. I ran up the stairs with my helmet still bobbing on my head. Something told me she might fancy me if I arrived wearing it. I was breathing fast through the hole in my helmet. My head felt hot underneath. I didn’t know if my feelings for her were right or wrong. All I knew was that they gave me a tight, secret feeling when I was astride my Honda 50.

  Angie opened the door and pulled me in. Her eyes were gleaming. I went to take my helmet off and she stopped me. Don’t, she said, don’t. I like you in that. Look at you, she said. Look at you. She leant in and kissed me through the helmet and then took my hand and led me to her bedroom where she took my helmet off, unstrapping the straps under my chin and lifting my whole hard head off. She laid it down on the bedside table and then kissed me again, slipping her tongue in and out of my mouth, and sliding her tongue over my lips. She undid my blouse and pulled one of my breasts out of my bra and slid her lips over my nipple. I think I love you, she murmured into my breast. Then she sat up. But I love Davy too. Oh, I said, Oh. I sat up too. I wanted to put my helmet on and leave. She pushed me on my back and stared at my belly. Is that a little scar? she said. Yes, I said. And she kissed it.

  I left her a few hours later. I was hot and I was bothered. I couldn’t see what she saw in Davy McIntosh. He arrived as I was leaving, wearing his Afghan coat with his hair all over his face, smoking his Regal. All right? he said. He was friendly enough. He had a dramatic stammer. Angie said she was going to cure him.

  I drove my motorbike home. I had a strange feeling I was being followed. The sky was bright, bright blue. I was in love with a girl who was also in love with a guy, but still I felt like I’d discovered something. Billy Ocean was singing ‘Love Really Hurts Without You’ inside my head, as I turned left into my street. My head was throbbing. Love. I kept seeing her face, kissing me. Did she really do that? Did she really kiss my . . . oh my god, she did. She did. I fell in love with the idea of being in love and I think I even liked it when it hurt. The next week Angie said, I think I’ll always love you as long as we live, but I only want to kiss Davy now.

  I took my bike out for long rides to Fintry and sang along to Janis Ian under my helmet. ‘I learned the truth at seventeen that love was meant for beauty queens.’

  The next lover was Sally. She was an incredibly quiet person. She hardly spoke. I spent all my time trying to draw her out, open her up. She was so shy; she tied herself up in knots. She’d start a sentence and then get shy of her own sentence and turn back. It was like she was always looking for some brackets to hug her. I feel like, Sally would say. And I’d say – Yes? And she’d say, Never mind never mind never mind. I think I’m feeling, Sally would say another day. Yes?

  Well I think . . . Oh, nothing, nothing, nothing. Till one day I said, You are such a tease. And she blushed and said, Oh no, no, no. I’m not a tease. And she pulled me towards her and kissed me, thrusting her tongue right into my mouth. But then when I got into bed with her, I was so surprised. Sally made so much noise having sex, so much noise for such a quiet woman; she almost blasted me out of the bed. I nearly jumped out of my skin when she screamed the first time. I thought something was terribly wrong, that I’d hurt her. After a bit, I realized she was letting all the noise out, all the noise she couldn’t make outside of the bedroom. Being quiet as a mouse all day drove dear Sally demented. So it was healthy then, for her to scream her head off in bed. But it didn’t do my ears any good and I had to break it to her gently. I was the tongue-tied one now because I knew she had really fallen for me by then. She would have done anything. It’s a responsibility being a lover. So it is. I said, I don’t think this is working. She said, Tell me what we need to do to make it work. I shook my head sadly and left. I didn’t feel all that good about myself. But I didn’t feel all that bad either. Life’s tough – and I was still young.

  Small moments. If Angie was the helmet and Sally was the scream, then Gail was the story. In bed, Gail could only get excited if I told her a story (that she had made up) about a farm hand out in the barn who suddenly came in and discovered us at it in the hay with the nonchalantly placid cows mooing away, close by in the milking barn. Well the farmhand is so surprised and delighted that . . . But I never got further than that bit of the story. Gail would grip me and shudder and shake silently to her
self, bending her body over like a half-shut knife, as if in terrible pain.

  I began to think that my grandmother was right, that she hadn’t missed all that much. The lovers I had either seemed to run away with their orgasms as if they were secret nuts to nibble on someplace far from me, or they shrieked the place down, making elaborate and excruciating expressions on their faces, slapping the bed and slapping me and frightening the hell out of me. Those ones made me feel like I was trapped in some sort of Edinburgh fringe performance show.

  Then, just when I had nearly given up, I met her, Martha. We were sitting opposite each other on a train. We chatted for quite a while and I fell asleep for a little dreamlike time. When I woke up, Martha smiled at me. There was something in the way that she smiled – a kind of openness. I knew then. I just knew that I would wake up many more times to Martha smiling at me. We courted for a long time for me – months and months. Drinks, dinners, chats, emails, texts . . . And then one night, she was round at mine, and the thing happened to me. It went all the way through me; it sped back to my birth and hurtled towards my death. It went through me like a train. Like a boat upturning. Like a tree in a wild storm. A couple of days later, I phoned my eighty-five-year-old grandmother to say that her pal Maggie had not been exaggerating. I’ve got a new woman in my life, Gran, I shouted down the phone. (She was very hard of hearing.) Good, she said – Good. But has she got a clean bread bin?

  Doorstep

  I’ve set myself a big challenge this Christmas: I’m spending it alone. There’s no point being with people for the sake of being with people. And there’s no point buying presents for the sake of it. I’m not good at the presents anyway. I can’t get into someone’s head to think what they’d like. Christmases past, I’ve found myself on Christmas Eve spinning up and down Market Street thinking socks, gloves, handkerchiefs, chocolates, bubble bath, thinking what’d she like, what’s she not got? It’s a bit of a stress and costs way too much. And she always had that look when she opened a present from me, a look on the verge of terrible depression; as if she was thinking you don’t really know me, do you?

  So: I’m opting out of the whole charade. And when Sharon said, ‘Oh let’s just get each other something small,’ I had to say, ‘No, that never works. One person keeps the bargain – under a fiver – and the other one doesn’t and then the one that doesn’t ends up feeling bitter, and says, “Oh well it’s the thought that counts.” Like hell! It’s the money that counts. It’s all gone crazy,’ I say.

  Sharon pulls a face. ‘You’re like Scrooge,’ she says.

  ‘I’m not. I’m not mean. Look what I forked out on you last year!’

  ‘Oh – are you saying you didn’t like my present? Is that what this is, Cheryl?’ Sharon is indignant.

  ‘No, it’s not – but it was a rubbish present,’ I say. Sharon looks hurt. ‘Joke!’ I say.

  ‘How come your jokes are not jokes,’ Sharon says. ‘How come your jokes are jibes? They’re not proper jokes.’

  ‘I’m having a laugh; where’s your sense of humour?’ I say to Sharon.

  ‘And that’s not nice either,’ Sharon says, close to tears.

  ‘What’s this about?’ I say. ‘Is this because I’m not getting you a Christmas present?’

  Sharon nods, silently, and the tears start to roll down her face. She wipes them away with her fists. ‘I didn’t mean to cry, sorry,’ she says.

  ‘You’re a cry-baby,’ I say.

  ‘I know,’ Sharon gulps. ‘I’m a cry-baby.’

  ‘Look, OK then. I’ll only get you a present and not my other friends.’

  Sharon says nothing, just keeps wiping her tears.

  ‘Is it because you’ve only really got me who buys you a present at Christmas?’ I say. What an idiot I am. Sharon’s got nobody. She’s big, huge, with massive knockers, and has bad skin and she likes me more than I like her. But I couldn’t fancy her in a fit. Sharon doesn’t have family; well not any family that she’s found anyway. She’s been with, I reckon, about twelve foster families. Sometimes I think the only thing that’s similar about us is our colour. ‘I’m so rubbish,’ I say. Sharon starts to smile. ‘You’re not. It’s me. I’m just out of sorts. I’ve not even got anyone this year to invite me to Christmas dinner.’

  ‘Look, I’ll get you a present, but I’m not having you round for dinner,’ I say, a bit too quickly.

  Sharon really starts to heave, really going for it. ‘Don’t cry,’ I say, half-heartedly.

  Sharon talks and cries. It’s horrible: worse than somebody talking with their mouth full of food. She half-chokes, half-speaks and the snot is pouring down her face. ‘D . . . d . . . d-don’t b-b-bother with the present. Don’t b-b . . . bother with any of it. You’ve got no Christmas spirit. And you’re not very nice.’ Sharon buttons up her navy duffel coat, sniffs and snorts, takes one last sad look at me and leaves my house, quietly closing the door.

  Christmas is one way of measuring the year. Last year, at Christmas, I had a partner; I had a job; I had friends. This year, no job, smaller house, and I want to be on my own. She’s going to be with her new lover, the Ex is. She’ll be doing all that roast bird, potatoes, gravy, pigs in the blanket, honey carrots, stuffing etc. shit for her. She loves crackers; they’ll have crackers. She loves roast parsnip; they’ll have roast parsnip. Am I bovvered? No, I’m feeling gooooooooooood. I’ve been liberated from the ordeal of Christmas! Hurray! I can opt out of the fattening Christmas meal, the sodden, shrivelled roasted veg, the Christmas pud – do you have brandy butter or custard, do you microwave or steam – and the wrapping paper, the horrid fights about what to watch on television. I’m having none of it. I’ll miss her kids, though. I liked her kids. But at Christmas she spoilt them rotten and there was nothing left for me to get them. That was a stress. That was a big stress: what to get the partner’s kids. One year I actually queued from early in the morning for a Buzz Lightyear! It was frantic.

  I’ll still get the children something and leave it on the doorstep on Christmas Eve; won’t matter so much now because the new girlfriend is loaded so I’ll go for something very small. Brilliant! I don’t think I’m even going to go and get a bird this year. No chicken, no capon, no turkey, no goose, no duck. No three birds stuffed into one. Fabulous! I can say that word like Gavin and Stacey. Fab-lus!

  I think I’ll get a nut roast. Maybe a nut roast is too lesbian? Something like aubergine parmigiana then instead; something like that. Or I could make a veg lasagne in a small casserole dish, so it doesn’t look weird. One thing I’ve decided is that I’ll do the shop soon. I don’t want to be in the supermarket with family trolleys heaving with food, and me and my small-and-obviously-alone basket. One of this, one of that – a small carton of milk. I could buy more than I need and freeze the stuff I don’t need in case of snow. Or I could invite Sharon. But I don’t want to invite Sharon. I want to spend the day on my own.

  I need to get out of my house and go for a winter walk. I wrap up well. It’s cold enough to snow but the afternoon sun is shining through the bare trees, like it has a love interest on the other side of the Ease. How still the Mersey, today, and dark, like a big mirror. I stand over it for ages to see if I can see the water move. People are out with their dogs and their children, their hats and their scarves and gloves, puffing smoky air out of their mouths. The clouds are pink in the sky like candyfloss. It’s freezing, but the sun is so bright, it makes everyone look happy. I can’t stop the chatter in my head. I’d like to be somebody who could simply walk and take it all in, not be constantly thinking all the time. I’d like to have a head that is as still as the winter river. I walk along the river bank, across the fields and through the woods. At the end of the woods I spot my first red robin of the winter pecking on the frozen earth. It doesn’t fly off as I get close. It’s not shy at all.

  If I don’t invite Sharon, she’ll spend Christmas on her own, and I’ll spend it on my own. We’ll both be in our different terrace houses. She’ll mind and I won
’t. I won’t mind being on my own. I won’t feel the loneliness that some people feel at Christmastime because actually I’m quite self-sufficient. That’s what my Ex edidn’t like about me. She used to say, ‘I wonder if I make any difference in your life,’ and I’d say, ‘Not really,’ then I’d say, ‘Joke!’ But she didn’t like my jokes either. I don’t really think my jokes are any worse than the jokes you find in crackers and nobody seems to mind them; they just groan – but nobody does that with my jokes.

  When I get in from the cold, I take off my scarf that my middle sister bought me when we were still talking to each other, and I take off my hat that my Ex bought me, and I take off my red coat that I bought in Oxfam in Didsbury. I often wonder about the person who the coat belonged to; what she’s doing this Christmas? I wouldn’t mind that: track down the girl who gave away the red coat to charity, and offer her Christmas dinner in exchange for the coat. It makes me feel a bit glam this red coat. But there’d be no way of finding out. It does make me realize, though, having that thought, that I’d quite like a stranger to turn up at the door this Christmas. Somebody a bit different. A tall dark woman with a pressie! That would be something! Imagine she turned up with frankincense or myrrh? Then I’d have to believe in Christmas. Except: I don’t really know what frankincense or myrrh look like.

  It’s cold so I decide to put my gas fire on, and I put the telly on. I have to have something on even if I’m not listening. There’s a Christmas choir singing ‘Once in Royal David’s City’. I always liked that when I was a kid; I used to imagine what the royal city looked like, crowned in jewels. Sharon thinks it’s all about her. It’s not. It’s all about me. I decide to ring and tell her. ‘I’m sorry about earlier, Sharon,’ I say.