Expectation

by Anna Hope

  She and Lucy and Hesther go up to London and they march in the streets. They dress up in costumes which they run up on sewing machines; they don fat suits with pinstripes to protest at the fat cats in the City. There are bicycles everywhere. There are solar-powered sound systems blowing bubbles into the crowd. Passers-by stop and shake their hips.

  She goes to dance classes on a Monday morning, where the teacher plays loud music and people of all ages throw themselves around the room and sweat and shout as though possessed. Sometimes in these classes, when the music is at its height, she screams. No one takes any notice, for this is what you are supposed to do. She realizes that she is angry. Very, very angry indeed.

  On the other side of her anger is something else.

  One morning, in Cate’s room, Lucy finds her anti-depressants.

  What do you want these for?

  I had a breakdown, says Cate. At uni. I’ve been taking them since then.

  You don’t need anti-depressants, says Lucy, looking up at her with a smile. You just need better friends.

  She throws away her pills, waits for the crash that she fears will come – but feels only relief at the ebbing of the fog.

  She is aware, somewhere at the back of her mind, what Hannah would say if she could see her, how easy all of this would be to parody, this benefit fraud and cider drinking and dancing and horizon watching. But she is starting not to care.

  She writes Hannah a postcard, an old-fashioned picture of an old woman with her skirts hitched up and her ankles in the sea – Come on in, it says, the water’s lovely.

  Lucy and Hesther both have vans and with her small savings Cate buys one too – a decommissioned ambulance which she parks at a cement works outside the city and, over the winter, with a little help from Lucy and a small Makita drill, converts herself. Tongue-and-groove cladding inside, a bed made from sawn plywood, shelves above and drawers beneath. It is ready by spring, and when it is finished she thinks she has never been prouder of anything in her life.

  There is an album they all listen to, all autumn, winter, spring. Clandestino, by Manu Chao. There is a song, ‘Minha Galera’, that Cate loves above all.

  Oh my waterfall.

  Oh my girl.

  My Romany girl.

  She plays it over and over, and when she listens to it she thinks of Lucy.

  Summer comes. They stock up on muesli and coffee and rice from the local wholesaler and take to the road. They drive west. They swim naked in rivers, emerging jubilant, silver-backed. They go to small festivals tucked into folds in the green hills.

  Cate comes to recognize some of the faces around the evening fires: young people like themselves, and older people; people whose faces tell stories, of weather and work and lives lived outside. At night, with tea and whisky, these older people loosen their tongues – they speak of Enclosure, of the Commons, of an older, wilder Britain, of gentle and of not so gentle defiance of the status quo. Cate thinks she can touch it, this life-giving current, ribboning out into the clear western night.

  And then they dance.

  One black night, at one small gathering, in high summer, when the air is still warm at midnight, where there are no lights, when there is no moon, Cate loses Lucy. She wanders around for hours, searching, feeling panic bite at the edges of her. She finds her again as dawn begins to break, sitting in the middle of a pile of people, naked from the waist up, her nipples painted gold.

  Lucy holds out her arms for Cate and Cate steps into them and then, filled with love and relief and a desire to claim, she bends her head to Lucy’s golden nipple and takes it into her mouth. It tastes of salt and metal and earth.

  Soon after, as the sun presses itself against the windows of her van, Cate slides her fingers into the slick warmth of Lucy and encounters no resistance. She watches Lucy buck and arch beneath her, her eyes half closed. She sees a tattoo on Lucy’s inner thigh, a filigree spider, a filigree web, and she puts her mouth on it, kisses it. She herself is shivering with desire – she doesn’t even need to be touched to come.

  2010

  Cate

  Mid-morning and Tom is sleeping. Cate sits at the kitchen table, the bag of pills beside her.

  Come on, Cate, nip it in the bud.

  As though it were that easy.

  This morning she went to the doctor, as Hannah suggested. The doctor was nice, was kind; she asked about Cate’s eating, sleeping, libido. She asked about the manner of the birth and Cate told her.

  Caesarean section.

  And was that hard?

  She thought about the fear – for her child, for herself. The confusion. The knives and numbness, the smell of burning flesh.

  Yes. I suppose it was.

  The doctor asked about whether she thought of hurting herself, hurting her son. No, said Cate. Not that.

  The doctor said that yes, she thought Cate was depressed. She said there was CBT, but a long waiting list, or anti-depressants. But if she took anti-depressants, she would have to wean her son. She asked if Cate had ever been on anti-depressants before.

  Yes, Prozac. At university.

  Good, said the doctor. Well, perhaps we’ll start with that.

  Cate reaches for the packet of pills, pops one from its packaging and holds it in her palm. The innocuous white and hospital green. They used to make her head fizz. If she drank while she was on them she would black out.

  She puts the pill down on the table and brings her computer towards her, searches ‘breastfeeding anti-depressants’ and reads that the amount of medication that gets to the breastfed baby is usually less than 10 per cent of the amount found in the mother’s blood. Which still sounds like an awful lot.

  You don’t need anti-depressants. You just need better friends.

  Her fingers hover over the keys, then she types ‘Lucy Skein’ into Google, feels her heartbeat increase. Several pictures appear, but none that resembles Lucy, although she would be older now of course, much older. She was four years older than Cate, so forty now, or nearly so. Perhaps Lucy Skein was never even her real name.

  They parted in the States. They had gone there to Seattle, to take part in the protests against the WTO. Had locked themselves into Perspex pipes and shut down the city. Had watched the police on their horses, their black uniforms, their masked faces, like a scene from a fairy tale, good against evil, light against dark. Had sat and chanted with thousands of other protestors as they were sprayed with CS gas till they were burning and almost blind. She remembers the pain, the inrush of feeling – the ecstatic logic of the binary. Of black and of white. Of being right.

  After Seattle they went down to Eugene, Oregon, and lived in a squatted warehouse for a couple of months with ten other activists, and that was where Lucy heard about the protest camps by Mount Hood – loggers cutting down ancient trees. They caught a ride out there together, walked out into the forest on a crisp November morning, the mountain rearing before them, the tang of earth and resin and snow in the air. They reached the camp, and there were the trees, and the people in those trees, their shouts and whistles as they moved about in nets high above their heads. And Cate saw the look on Lucy’s face, and watched, helpless, as Lucy pulled out her ropes and strapped herself on, and then she was climbing away from her, and Cate stood earthbound, leaden-hearted, as Lucy climbed up into green and light.

  They rode back to Eugene. Cate’s visa was running out. Lucy didn’t need one. They went to a tattoo parlour downtown, where Cate sat while Lucy held her hand, as an unsmiling man leaned over her arm and drew a filigree spider in a silver web. She flew home, determined to fly back again as soon as she could. She went down to the internet cafe every day to check her email, but there was never a word. Those first weeks, as the tattoo scabbed and healed, when missing Lucy grew too much she would press her fingernail into it, would lift the scab to feel that pain again.

  She went back to her job in the cafe, signed on, trying to save for another flight, waiting for word, but no word came. Spring came a
nd went, and brought nothing from Lucy. Then in the early summer, an email – a few words.

  Some of us in the camp have been arrested. They say we’re terrorists. I won’t use this account any more.

  Spin always.

  Weave always.

  Love always.

  L. X

  And then nothing. Severance. Free fall.

  Years. Years in which Cate thought she saw her constantly, on the beach in Brighton, or cycling through the city, her long hair down her back. Years in which Cate stayed working at the cafe, still watching the door, waiting for Lucy to walk back in.

  It was Hannah who finally walked through the door. Hannah who came down to Brighton one day, who stood in her smart work clothes and looked around the cafe – at the cakes on their cake stands and the menu chalked up on to the board, the pitta and hummus and the bean burgers and soya lattes, and said, You have a first-class degree from Oxford University. What the hell are you still doing working here?

  It was Hannah who told her about the room in the house Lissa had found in London Fields. Cheap rent. On the park. A chance to start again. And because she knew she was rotting behind that counter, corroded with waiting, Cate took it.

  She stares back at the pictures on her computer screen, feels the old twist of loss.

  She could have searched harder. Could have gone back to the States, could have found her. Could have claimed her, claimed that part of herself.

  And then a thought comes to her – Hesther. Perhaps there are pictures of Lucy in Hesther’s feed – perhaps they have stayed in touch. She searches for Hesther, finds her profile, the pictures of her family, her Georgian house in Bristol, her high ceilings and her lovely kitchen. Clicks back and back and back. There are a few photographs from the Brighton days but none of Lucy.

  She clicks on Hesther’s name.

  Hey Hesther, long time. Hope all is well.

  Just thinking about some old friends today. Wondered if you had Lucy Skein’s contact details?

  Much love

  Cate.

  She presses send.

  Fuck.

  There is a knock at the door. Cate stays where she is, but the knock comes again, imperious this time, and then the sound of a key turning in the lock. Horrified, she goes out into the hall where she sees Alice coming through the door.

  ‘I thought you might need a hand.’ Sam’s mother is brisk, dressed in a scarf and padded gilet, her cheeks rosy. A bulging bag stands at her feet. ‘So I brought some help.’ She lifts the bag, which is bristling with lurid plastic bottles. ‘Shall I come in?’

  Cate steps back as Alice passes her into the kitchen. The pills are still on the table, next to the computer, open to a series of photographs of women’s faces. Cate moves, putting herself between the table and Alice, her heart beating wildly.

  ‘Still haven’t unpacked those?’ Alice takes off her gilet and hangs it on the back of a chair, then points to the tower of boxes behind the door.

  ‘Not yet. I mean – I’ve been waiting to borrow a car, for a charity-shop run.’

  ‘You can borrow Terry’s,’ says Alice, taking a crisp, ironed apron from the bag and tying it around her waist. She lifts bottles from the bag. ‘I thought we could tackle the kitchen and bathrooms then go for a bit of tea and cake. Get you both out of the house.’

  Cate eyes the bottles. Alice’s cleaning cupboard is a temple to carcinogens in all their many varieties. ‘Oh, well, that’s so lovely of you, Alice.’ She turns around, gathers her computer and the pills and brings them all into the safety of her cardigan. ‘The thing is …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m actually just heading out.’

  ‘Out?’ Alice’s head is cocked; she appears to be sniffing the air for untruths.

  ‘Yes. To playgroup.’

  ‘Playgroup?’

  ‘The one you recommended.’ Cate nods at the flyer on the fridge. ‘I’ve just been waiting for Tom to wake up. I’m just going to check on him now. Excuse me a sec.’

  She races upstairs to the bedroom, where Tom is fast asleep, his arms flung out at right angles on the duvet. She shoves the pill back in the packet, puts the packet in the paper bag and the bag at the very back of the bathroom cupboard, covered with a towel, scrubs her face with a flannel, returns to the bedroom, pulls a jumper over Tom’s Babygro, pulls on the sling and manoeuvres him swiftly into it, then makes her way downstairs as he begins to properly stir.

  ‘There we are,’ she says, snatching the playgroup flyer from the fridge and one of the space-food packets from the cupboard. ‘I’m really sorry to miss you, Alice. And I’m so grateful for your help.’

  Alice stands in the middle of the room. ‘Well, all right then. But don’t forget Tuesday.’

  ‘Tuesday?’

  ‘Tuesday, my grandson and I have a date!’

  The address on the flyer is a low, unprepossessing municipal building. She walks quickly past, further up the hill, then curves back around the block, in sight of the hall once more.

  She need not actually go to playgroup at all. She could take Tom and go somewhere else, perhaps to a cafe, one with wifi, drink coffee and jitter through the morning, spending her finite energies on more fruitless internet searches, but it is starting to rain, and Tom is grizzling and here she is. She crosses the street, over the threshold, coming into a hallway which is a chaos of buggies and shoes and coats. She lifts Tom from the sling and gives her name to the woman at reception. A tidal roar comes from behind double glass doors.

  ‘It’s five pounds for the session,’ says the woman, ‘but you can pay three. It started an hour ago.’

  Cate pulls some coins from her wallet and tosses them down. Inside she is greeted by a thrashing sea of children and plastic toys. She grips on to Tom, who grips back, his head turning this way and that. There seems to be no safe harbour anywhere. Her heart is thumping, sweat breaking on her back.

  ‘It’s circle time now.’

  Cate turns to see a brisk, grey-haired woman standing beside her.

  ‘There’s a baby mat over there for when we’re done.’ The woman points into the far corner and claps her hands. ‘Circle time!’ she calls in a sing-song voice, and Cate watches as the hordes form themselves into a ragged approximation of a circle. ‘Come on,’ says the grey-haired woman to Cate, in a tone that brooks no opposition. ‘Come and join in.’

  The woman launches into a joyless version of ‘The Wheels on the Bus’. Larger children practise commando crawling across the space, and Cate shields Tom between her legs. Here, amongst the older children, he seems terribly small.

  When do we get off the bus? Cate wants to ask, as the grey-haired woman grinds on. When does the bus actually stop? The last time she sat on a mat like this was when she was a child herself. Miss? Miss? Are we nearly there yet? Please, Miss, I want to get down.

  Eventually the bus judders to a halt, and after a few rounds of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ and ‘Wind the Bobbin Up’ the woman claps her hands. ‘All right, children. It’s free play!’

  There’s general screaming as the larger children dive towards racks of dressing-up clothes. A girl emerges from the melee in a fireman’s suit; her hijab-wearing mother grins back at her and gives the thumbs-up. Superheroes twist and flail across the room. Cate retreats to the corner, to the baby mat, where a scattering of toys have been put out.

  ‘Jesus Christ, it’s like World War Three in here.’

  She looks up to see a woman standing close to her, a baby around the same age as Tom in her arms. ‘I was told it was OK for little ones.’

  ‘I know. I think perhaps you have to keep to the corner.’ Cate gestures to the mat beneath her.

  ‘Really?’ The woman looks cross. ‘Well, what’s the bloody point in that?’

  The woman’s baby has seen Tom and is reaching out for him. The mother notices, amused. ‘You want to get down?’ She kneels and puts her child on the mat. The baby is dressed in a hand-knitted, haphazard style. She wears a home-spun
bonnet which gives her the look of a small mushroom, or a Bruegel peasant. The woman plucks her daughter’s hat from her head and black curls spring forth, then throws off her own cardigan. She is small, with a gentle intensity to her features, short brown hair, an angular fringe.

  On the mat, their children are groping for each other. Their hands touch and they both scream in delight. The woman laughs. ‘Who’s this then?’

  ‘This is Tom,’ says Cate.

  ‘This is Nora,’ says the woman.

  ‘That’s a good name.’

  ‘You think? My partner decided on it. All the ones I wanted had some sort of tragedy attached to them. Antigone. Iphigenia.’

  Is she joking? Cate can’t tell, but the woman catches her eye and smiles. She sits back and blows her fringe from her forehead. ‘Where’s the Tom from then?’

  ‘Oh, well, we just liked it, I suppose.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ The woman reaches out and places a toy in front of Nora. It has lots of buttons which Nora presses in turn, blaring out Americanized versions of nursery rhymes.

  ‘Oh, nononononono.’ The woman leans in and turns the sound off. ‘We’ve had quite enough of that for one morning.’ Nora presses the buttons a few more times, but when they yield nothing, loses interest and crawls over to where Tom is bashing a block against the side of a table. ‘I like the Babygro,’ says the woman, gesturing to him.

  ‘Oh.’ Cate can feel herself colour. ‘We were late, and he was sleeping, so—’

  ‘I’d wear one myself if I could. Can you imagine, someone putting you in a Babygro and tucking you in? Letting you sleep? Heaven.’ The woman closes her eyes, and for a moment exhaustion takes over her features, until there is a cry and she snaps them open again. Nora is reaching for the wisps of hair on Tom’s head. ‘Oh, no no, we don’t grab, darling,’ says the woman, lifting her child away and on to her lap as Nora’s fingers clutch on air.