by Ann Morgan
The best times are the early evenings, after everyone else has gone, when the two of you push on into the heart of the project and the rest of the world tiptoes away. It reminds you of the sort of laser focus you used to have in the art room at the unit, except there’s a difference here: there are two of you in it together and it makes the whole thing calmer. With Gareth there, the experience feels more solid: a tanker ploughing the waters the skiff of your imagination used to skim. It slows things down, but it makes them deeper, more substantial – less liable to capsize.
‘I like this,’ you tell him one evening, looking across from your easel to see his fair head bent over an A2 sheet of paper, intent on the urban landscape taking shape beneath his hand.
He looks up blinking, disorientated for a second. Then he risks a smile. You will yourself to hold his gaze for more than a second.
The hardest thing about the trip will be leaving Beryl’s house. Things have got so comfortable between you that you don’t even need to say much any more. You sit mute, balancing your trays on your laps, watching whatever the programmers at the BBC or ITV decide to serve up to you. It’s not a hostile silence like you used to have at the table with Mother and Akela or a dead silence such as you’d get with most people in the unit where you felt like there was a wall between you; it’s an active, friendly silence. Companionable, that’s the word. You feel like you could break it any moment, only you don’t need to. It’s like what you imagine family – real family – to be. If it didn’t sound so weird, you’d tell her so. Only you know she’d purse her lips and think you were coming over all unnecessary.
She’s not that sold on you going to Amsterdam.
‘Lots of drugs there,’ she observes when you first mention it. ‘Fallen women. Prostitutes, I should say.’
You nod, shrug. Don’t say a word. You know she doesn’t mean it how it sounds. You know very well that if one of those fallen women should knock on Beryl’s door in a crisis, she’d take her in without a second thought. Hell, you realise with a shock, she already has.
On the last evening, Beryl cooks one of her specialities: toad in the hole with onion gravy. The two of you sit and eat it in front of Coronation Street.
‘Thanks for everything,’ you say, and the words catch in your throat. She flaps them away, bustles out to the kitchen with the empty plates.
‘You’ll be wanting these, I expect,’ she says when she returns, holding out a cool bag packed with sandwiches and slices of homemade banana loaf wrapped up in foil. ‘For the ferry,’ she adds.
‘I’ll be in touch, Beryl,’ you say. ‘I’ll call.’
‘No,’ she says, settling back into her chair. ‘You won’t. I’ve seen it a million times. It’s as it should be. Now get off upstairs with you and don’t forget to strip that bed first thing.’
Then it’s morning. You step, blinking, off the bus you caught in what felt like the middle of the night. The white railings of the ferry are tinged blue in the half-light. As the boat pulls out from Hull and into the open waters of the North Sea, you stand at the stern, looking back at the shrinking strip of land, chewing one of Beryl’s sandwiches. Mother and Akela are there, you think. Hellie and Richard and the staff at the unit. All at once the past seems very small.
53
She didn’t go to the Walworth flat for several days, preferring to wander the leafy streets near the hospital at night and sip cups of tea in a greasy spoon on the South Circular. A couple of afternoons she dozed in the chair beside Hellie’s bed, but mostly she was buzzing too much to think about sleep.
When at last she did go back to change her clothes, she found someone had scrawled FUUUUCK! on the wall by the bins and there were fag ends and bits of broken glass around the back door. The clothes in her room smelled sour but she put them on anyway, closing her eyes to zone out the panic that reverberated at her from the ceiling and the walls – all the jagged energy absorbed into the woodchip and crumbling plaster over the preceding years.
Back at the hospital, she popped into the canteen to pick up a Mars Bar. She was queuing to pay when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Turning round, she saw a familiar man with wavy blond hair and a slightly dominant chin looking down at her.
‘Trudy,’ said the man. ‘Well, not Trudy, but…’
‘Yes,’ she said, gaping with surprise as the pieces fell into place. ‘Anton. Fuck!’
She saw him look around anxiously.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘Knee-jerk reaction.’
He shook his head. ‘Quite all right.’
He was holding a banana and a carton of Um Bongo.
‘Oh, it’s not for me,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s for my sister’s son. My nephew. He’s eight. We’re here visiting my father.’
He nodded over to a group of well-dressed people at a table by the window.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Sorry to hear that. What…?’
‘Stroke,’ said Anton briskly. ‘Nothing to be done about it. Not long now, I suspect. Still, they keep trying to see if they can get some sort of response out of him.’
She nodded awkwardly, feeling the chocolate bar starting to go soft in her hand through its wrapper. What must he think of her after the way she left things? After she ran out like that? She glanced at his face, trying to read the answer there, but his expression was contained and cordial.
‘And you?’ he said.
‘I’m here visiting my… friend. She had an accident. A car accident. She’s in a coma.’
Anton shook his head. ‘Rotten luck.’
There was a pause. He fiddled with the straw stuck on the back of the Um Bongo carton. Then they both tried to talk at once.
‘How have you been?’ he ventured, but she waved the words away.
‘Best not go into it,’ she said. Her voice was different, talking to him. Lighter, posher. The old Trudy confidence seeping through in spite of everything.
Anton nodded. ‘Right-oh.’ He tapped his foot on the floor. ‘Listen, I’m glad I ran into you – even in these circumstances. There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.’
She held up her hands, alarmed suddenly that he was going to do something to bring it all back: what happened up in Manchester, the beautiful, bright things ruined.
‘Please, really,’ she said. ‘It’s all in the past. I can’t do anything about that now. I’m sorry, I should have handled things better. I should have been more open with you from day one, but I—’
‘No,’ he said, putting his hand on her arm, commandeering the conversation once again. It must be something they taught them at public school, she reflected – that cast-iron ability to insist, to impose your will on others. ‘No,’ he said again. ‘It’s nothing to do with what happened.’
He glanced over at the table by the window. The people there were getting up, putting on their coats. Amongst them, next to a glamorous girl in a trouser suit, she saw someone who must be Anton’s mother: the chin was the same and there was something familiar about the eyes. She was a sturdy woman, Smudge saw, resolute. The sort who would think it poor form to cry.
When she looked back at Anton, she noticed a change had come over him, his assurance sunk beneath a boyish nervousness. He was scuffing his shoe on the linoleum.
‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ he said, fumbling in his trouser pocket. ‘But here, take my card. Call me and let’s arrange a time to meet up. I promise, you won’t regret it.’
‘Anton,’ came a voice from across the room.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Coming.’
He pressed the card into her hand. ‘You won’t forget, will you?’
She shrugged. ‘Sure,’ she said, not meeting his eye.
He gave her a brilliant smile and hurried away to join his relatives. She slipped the card into her coat pocket to join the empty chewing-gum wrappers and receipts and the other bits of yesterday’s rubbish.
54
The office is in a side street, just off one of the canals, above a shop selling shoes
made from car tyres. You have to climb a narrow wooden staircase to reach it, but once you’re up the place opens into a huge, light-filled loft with large, long windows looking down on to the pedestrians and cyclists passing in the street below. The room is sparsely furnished, but everything you might need is there: easels, Macs, a large drawing board, a kettle, microwave and selection of tea and coffee, a sofa. You turn to Gareth with a grin. Your expressions both say the same thing: you’ve lucked out.
‘We hope you like it,’ says the small man in spectacles who shows you round. ‘We hope it is—’ his fingers pluck the air for the word – ‘conducive to artistic work. We are business people. What do we know? We have done our best but if there is anything you want, just call. No one will disturb you here. You come and go as you please.’
He is so self-effacing that it’s not until you ask him to repeat his name when he’s leaving that you realise he is Jan Heijn, director of Air Bubble, the company you’ll be working for, and heir to a sizeable chunk of the Ahold millions.
After the door closes behind him, cutting off the street noise, Gareth turns to you with a laugh. ‘Fuck me,’ he says. ‘Just… fuck m-me!’
You laugh with him. It’s the first time you’ve ever heard him swear.
That first day, you don’t do much. You get out the sketches and line them up along the walls. There is a neat clip system that lets you hang them against the bare brickwork so you can consider them all together. Some of the ideas are good, others are dead in the water.
‘The Mona Lisa’s rubbish,’ observes Gareth, looking at the rough of the famous figure cradling an outsize mobile phone. You have to agree.
You have lunch in a small cafe across the way. Somehow, that turns into an afternoon outing and soon you’re both strolling through the streets, drinking in the sights and sounds of the new city. You wander in and out of shops, picking up things just to feel the weight of them.
‘Is it me or is design just so much better here?’ says Gareth, staring at a desk lamp created out of a single curve of wood.
‘Everything’s better,’ you say. ‘All of it.’
You mean it. This place gives you a feeling of life expanding, possibility unfurling its red carpet in every direction you look. You are different here. More.
Towards the middle of the afternoon, you come upon a long line of people snaking from a crossroads in the direction of one of the main canals.
‘Queue for a gig?’ speculates Gareth.
‘Unlikely,’ you say, looking at a grey-haired American couple squinting at a map.
It turns out the people are waiting to go into the Anne Frank House.
‘Shall we?’ says Gareth.
You shrug.
Within half an hour, you’re clambering up the steep staircase behind the bookshelf and into the cramped rooms beyond. You’re shocked to find Anne’s pin-ups on one of the walls: pictures of a young Princess Elizabeth, Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers. It seems an intrusion somehow that these things should be opened up for the scrutiny of so many eyes: ephemera made permanent by virtue of any untimely death. Had Anne lived another six months, you think, she might have decided that Elizabeth was too heavy about the jaw to be beautiful and taken the picture down, just as she might have gone off that dork of a boy she mooned about the attic space with, but instead, here she was, for ever chalked up as a fan of the future Queen of England, with a teenage crush because of factors beyond her control. A frozen version of an unfinished self.
You’re both subdued when you get out. There’s nothing appropriate to say. Gareth keeps blinking and shaking his head, whistling through his teeth.
You stroll silently through the streets for a while. Then an idea strikes you.
‘Come on,’ you say, taking Gareth’s hand. ‘I know what we need.’
You’ve heard about them from people in the unit: the coffee shops that sell weed. In your mind you picture them as genteel places, with cookies on the counter and an espresso machine bubbling against the back wall. But it turns out they’re nothing like that. The first one you come to is packed with English guys in tracksuits – some sort of stag do or birthday jaunt. There’s a grim, aggressive feeling in the air, a menace that seems to suggest that someone or something is going to get punched or fucked before very long.
You lead the way on through the back streets, becoming adept at spotting the cannabis leaf symbol on plastic signs jutting out over doorways. The next couple of places are equally unpromising, but at last you find yourself in a quiet alleyway, facing a doorway that seems less intimidating. You push through hanging strands of coloured tape into what looks like a sweetshop run by teenagers. The whole place is painted black, with scuffmarks up the walls. There is a foosball table in the middle and a television playing an episode of Dutch X Factor. The glass counter is stacked with chocolate bars and packets of crisps. A scruffy guy leans on it, chewing the end of his ponytail.
Fear throbs in your chest for a moment. There is something familiar about the place that you do not like – a recklessness hiding in the corners that might rush in and wrest you into giddy spirals once more. You swallow it back and head for the counter.
‘Pre-rolled, please,’ you say.
‘Hash or grass?’ says the guy.
You plump for grass. He yawns and reaches one down from a box on the shelf behind him without looking back.
You pay and settle yourselves at a table by the window, an ashtray between you. Gareth stares about him, wide-eyed.
‘It’s surreal, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘That you can just do this here. That no one bats an eyelid.’
You shrug and spark up. Cloudiness floods down your throat and into your lungs: a breath of herbal peace. Yep, this is going to be a good thing after all. You take another toke and pass it over.
Gareth puts the joint gingerly to his lips. You squint; think about asking him if he’s ever done it before; dismiss the idea.
You smoke in silence for a bit, passing the joint back and forth between you. Gareth draws at it with urgent little gasps. After a while, he gets this loose look about his face. His hair starts to stick out at odd angles and it’s as though someone has unlatched his features, expanding his expressions by half a centimetre. The craters at his temples stand out dark against his skin.
‘I like this place,’ he says, nodding. ‘I… I like this place.’
You reach for the joint, take a few more puffs. A sense of well-being floods through you. Life’s owed you this, you think. All the shit you’ve been through and now here you are, working as an artist in Amsterdam. It’s like, the crap that a normal person would go through in a lifetime has been concentrated just in your first two and a bit decades. But now you’re through it and what’s left is years and years of good times. You smile to yourself, hum something, a half-remembered tune… something about celebration and good times. Cheesy, but it has a kind of truth to it, you realise. Everything does, if only you know where to look.
Gareth’s eyes go wider still. He studies your face as though seeing it for the first time.
‘I have a confession to make,’ he says. ‘Don’t laugh.’
He scrubs his hands over his head, making his hair even tuftier. He leans in.
‘I fancy you,’ he says.
You narrow your eyes at him. ‘Fuck off,’ you say.
‘Seriously,’ he says. ‘I’m not joking.’
You roll your eyes.
‘Seriously,’ he says again. ‘I fancy you hard. Literally. The first time you came in, your first day, I got, like, this m-massive boner. Edmund was g-getting all aggro and there was me, stuck behind the easel, trying to hide my m-massive boner.’
You look at him for a second. Then a gust of laughter blows through you, exploding out of your mouth, spattering him with spray.
‘Hey!’ he says, wiping his face. ‘I said, don’t laugh.’
But he is laughing too. You’re both laughing. It’s so fucking funny. You laugh so much that three guys playing dominoes
in the corner turn around to stare. You laugh until the table shakes and you think you might fall off your chair.
‘Oh, blow it, that’s really unprofessional, isn’t it?’ says Gareth when the shuddering subsides. ‘Why did I say that? You’re going to hate me now, aren’t you?’
You pick up the joint, respark it, take a toke.
‘Let me get one thing straight,’ you say. ‘When you say “massive boner”…’
‘Oh, get lost,’ says Gareth. ‘All right. M-Medium-sized boner. M-Massive for me, anyway.’
There’s a pause. ‘Not that I’m—’ he begins, and sags in his seat, unable to carry the sentence through. ‘Anyway, a-we shouldn’t be talking about this. A-We’re colleagues. Professionals.’
You grin. ‘Yes, we are,’ you say.
You stay in the coffee shop for a while, eating crisps and drinking Coke. You’ll be the first to admit it: you’re quite stoned. That joint packed more of a punch than you were expecting. You realise it when the two of you start to analyse Dutch X Factor and seem to hit upon a recipe that would cancel out all the problems of the European Union and, ultimately, resolve conflicts around the world. You can’t keep hold of the precise details, but it has something to do with establishing a massive global judging panel and the music of ABBA.
The sun is starting to set when at last you shuffle out. It shines along the street, turning the windows golden.
‘Wow,’ says Gareth. ‘A-What a day.’
You look up at him, seeing how the light gilds him, turning the tips of his hair orange. With a shock, you see that he is beautiful. His eyes, you realise, are glittering stars.
You reach up and place a kiss upon his lips. His body jolts, then softens, folding you into an embrace. You kiss for a while, standing there in the street with bikes zipping past. Then he pulls away.
