by Sonia Paige
She said, ‘Yes, I was alive then too. We have come back.’
Alex shouted at the lady, ‘I want my life… I want a chance of being happy… I want my life back…’
She woke shaking and realized she was lying in her own bed.
She could hear a woman’s sobs coming through the ceiling from upstairs.
Thursday 20th December 11 pm
In a small terraced house in west London, the woman sitting in bed next to Duane tucked her hair behind her ears twice. As he slept, she looked at his thick black locks fanned out across the pillow and encircling his head. His face was unworried, smooth as a statue. It hardly moved as he breathed. She picked up the end of one of his braids and wrapped it tightly around the third finger on her left hand.
A tear dropped off the end of her nose.
Thursday 20th December 11.15 pm
Freddie, in his bedroom upstairs in Anthea’s house, was lying on the floor on his goatskin rug. His wet shoes were by the door where he had taken them off. One of his socks had a hole in the heel. He looked up at the wall with the small photo of the woman with wispy blond hair. Then he looked back at the letter he was trying to write:
‘“Grave View”
Hackney-en-Haute avec-scrambled-brain
Amidst The Ruins of Late Capitalism
Thursday nite
‘Dear Invisible Girlfriend,
‘We can’t keep not meeting like this.
‘I tried, oh how I tried, to fight the sweet longings which have distracted my mind for the past twenty years but with little success. It is over a year i.e. an eternity since I last saw you. Thus I have decided to give in to my outrageous thoughts and write to you.
‘I am bankrupt due to 2 police fines. Nevertheless, you’ll find me preparing to celebrate Xmas in wonderfully gay and carefree mood – laughing and joking – doing handsprings – making paper-chains, etc.
‘I wonder what neck of this weary world you are in tonight. Or if you’ve been sucked in to the belly of the beast. If only I could rescue you. But I don’t believe in Heroes anyway, they only keep history teachers in a job.
‘If you get this letter, then hurry up and invite me to stay with you for a minimum period of ninety years for I am redundant – no, it’s a lie – I’m as respectable as anyone. How is that bloke of yours and does he know how lucky he is, I want to know. Simply love to see you
darling
‘You must come to dinner sometime soon
And when you do
Perhaps you could kindly bring with you
Lots of tins of things to eat
Then we could have a cuppa tea
If you agree to pay the V.A.T.’
Freddie turned the sheet of paper over to see what was on the other side. It was a letter from the DHSS and he put a line through it with his pen.
Thursday 20th December 11.45 pm
In central London, in a Victorian block of flats in Rosebery Avenue, Dora’s bedroom door was open. Some manuscripts she had brought home from work were piled up next to the bed. Beside them, an empty bottle of wine and two half-empty glasses. Then a leopard skin handbag. On the double bed, Dora lay asleep on her back with her legs splayed. She had no knickers on. One of her stockings was laddered, but the suspenders were in place, and her black lacy bodice was still tightly fastened giving her a narrow, waspish waist. The backcombing in her hair had got squashed and was all sticking out on one side. Her extravagant black eye makeup was smudged down her right cheek.
Spread out on the bed beside her lay Giles. His face was down, his chubby pink bottom up. His left hand rested on Dora’s midriff. He was snoring.
Dora dreamt that she was walking across the Clifton Suspension Bridge carrying a baby clutched to her midriff. The bridge was moving under her feet. She realized that she had forgotten to feed the baby. As she walked, it was getting thinner and thinner.
Thursday 20th December 12 pm
Ren held the telephone close as she lay in bed. ‘If I can’t get to the airport, I’ll pick you up at the Caledonian Road tube. Remember to bring your snow shoes.’
‘It won’t be anything like what we have in New York,’ said Maureen.
‘It’s 131 days since I saw you,’ said Ren.
‘You’ve been counting?’ Maureen laughed.
‘I’ll make you a nut roast for the day you arrive. Ute and the others will have turkey on Christmas Day.’
‘I could do with your masseur’s hands on my back. I’ve been under pressure. The Americans are workaholics, remember? None of that healthy British tradition of skiving.’
Ren rolled her head back onto the pillow and smiled. ‘You can skive as much as you like while you are here. I’ll give you a massage. I’ll look after you.’
‘And what can I do for you, love?’
‘Sing me a lullaby. Now?’
Maureen’s voice was milk and velvet as she sang ‘My Bonnie lies over the Ocean’.
Friday 21st December 9 am
After breakfast Beverly is sitting on her bed holding her stomach. She looks across the room at me and says, ‘You was telling a story. About Greece.’
I am sitting on the side of my bed trying to tidy my hair with a comb. It’s all flyaway and tangled, and I want to look presentable in court. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘About me in Greece. Years ago.’
‘So what happen in the end?’ asks Beverley.
‘I left. That was it.’ I put the comb and some other bits and pieces into my stripey shoulder bag and put that into the black plastic bag they have given me for my stuff. ‘I told it. Done it. I climbed out of hell then, I’m getting out of this hell-hole now.’
‘She went back home to her mummy,’ says Debs.
‘Not quite,’ I say. I pick up the blue felt tip pen, reach up to the highest web on the wall and draw a big spider. The pen’s running out, but when I lick it there’s enough colour to put hairs on all eight legs. ‘Mandy always wanted me to do one of them.’
‘So what happen next?’ asks Beverley. ‘Stories don’t end.’
‘Yeah,’ says Debs, watching me and twisting her pony tail round and round, ‘After you left Greece. What about that American? The one with the notebook? Did he make a move on you n’all?’
‘That’s another story,’ I say.
They’ve given me back my rainbow laces and I’m threading them into my boots. Now I can walk properly again without shuffling. I feel like a toddler who’s been given permission to take her first steps, to strike out on her own. I’m leaving.
Debs wanders over and starts looking around my bed. ‘Packing up, are we?’
She picks up the pen, does a squiggle over one of my drawings to test it out, then finds a space and writes the number six in a neat hand. She adds a circle and a full stop. “Day Six. You’re all done. Lucky for some.’ She opens the cupboard by my bed. ‘Ain’t forgot nothing?’
‘You won’t find no dog-ends there, chile,’ says Beverly. ‘She never smoke.’
‘What’s this?’ says Debs. She pulls out a piece of paper with pencil writing on.
My heart sinks. ‘That’s nothing,’ I say. Oh, bugger. Stupid place to leave it. ‘Some nonsense.’ I don’t need this on my last day.
‘What d’ya mean, nothing?’ says Debs. ‘This your writing? Mandy got you going, did she?’
I don’t even try to get it back off her. Don’t show that you mind. Keep what grains of self-respect you have left. Don’t rise. Perhaps she’ll lose interest.
Debs walks off down the room with it.
‘What it say?’ asks Beverly.
Debs holds the paper up to her face and reads aloud: ‘“At first it was too small and dark. It fitted too closely, the curtains billowing tight around the damp flesh.”’ She looks over the paper at Beverley, ‘What’s this about?’
‘G’wan, read it!’ says Bev.
They both look at me. I shut my eyes. This will be over soon.
Debs carries on reading: ‘“There was nothing to do there, just t
he gentle breathing of the draught in the cloth. Outside they were waiting. Eyes strained in and behind them I could see the ripple of yellow corn in a field. ‘What’s that?’ I said. ‘Don’t go too quick,’ they said, and I slipped through the eye of the needle and burst into light.”’
Debs shook her head. ‘Bloody mad, this.’
‘She trying to write,’ says Beverly. ‘Ain’t that so, Karina?’ I half-open my eyes and glower in her direction. She looks back at Debs, ‘Remember, she want to write? You got more?’
Debs reads, ‘“Around the transparent pink spacesuit skin they pressed their eyes and noses and laughed but you couldn’t hear them. Soft mesh of protection surrounding me. I saw the look on their faces, and their lips melted into haze as they span away and the control panels sizzled. ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven, six…’ they said and I took a first step into air without weight, my arms lifted and my heart drumming.”’
Debs has a good strong reading voice. She’s kind of making fun but she’s genuinely curious too. I remember that she’s always been curious. At this moment she doesn’t sound mean. I have my eyes shut in shame but I realize it’s strange and pleasant to hear the words I’ve written spoken aloud by Debs. It gives them a status and a presence in the world that has never before been given to anything I have written.
She goes on: ‘“I saw them clap and the membrane of the bubble around me swelled ’till they were giant toys. Altitude, gravity, levity, speed, air, earth, fire and water, the dials were spinning. I couldn’t see their eyes. A blue light flashed. ‘We’re entering the atmosphere too fast,’ I said and my voice surprised me. I reached for the joystick and swung into gear. From the corner of my eye I saw a message written on the outside of the bubble. In mirror letters it spelled out in white the one word, ‘Help.’
‘“‘Your time is up,’ they said, and the bubble burst.”’
Debs stops. ‘It don’t make sense.’
Beverly says, ‘She’s working stuff out, ain’t she?’
I open my eyes and look at them. I notice I’m playing with the ring on the little finger of my right hand. At least in here I’ve managed to keep that secret safe. By the skin of my teeth.
Debs goes on: ‘“I woke out of a dream into a nightmare. The nightmare was a prison cell. My head was level with my feet. My brain was full of concrete. Someone was attacking it with a pneumatic drill. The writing on the wall said ‘Cunts are best’ and ‘I love Tracey.’ I did not know Tracey. The air was like a septic greenhouse where nothing grows.”
‘I got that last bit,’ says Debs, ‘We all been there. But what the fuck?’
She read on: ‘“All I knew was that each time my breath still entered uninvited, and left in vain. Wearing out time with no-one to mend it.
‘“I cannot close the door.”’
Debs lowers the paper, looks at me over it and wrinkles her nose with an expression that I know well.
‘So? She not invisible,’ said Bev. ‘Hey, Karina, you done a few words.’
I stare back and take a breath. It’s the last one I take in that cell.
The hatch slides open. ‘Jenkins!’ says an officer’s voice. ‘Ready for court?’
The key rattles in the lock and the door bangs open.
This is my big moment. ‘I’m off,’ I pick up my black plastic bag. I slide my feet into the boots. ‘Goodbye.’
Beverley holds up her hand as I walk out.
‘Good luck, babes,’ says Debs. ‘You’re off back to your mummy now n’all.’
I look back round the edge of the door. ‘I told you, I don’t do happy endings. Maybe I don’t even do endings.’
Coming in Part 2 …
‘The tin-opener hung on a rack at the back of the shop. It slipped unseen into the left pocket of his donkey jacket. He would have got away with it except for the hole in the pocket. It landed with a rattle at Reuben’s feet just as he passed the counter on his way out.
‘The bored shopkeeper’s eyes startled into focus. “Would it be a tinopener you were after, sir?”
‘Reuben hung his head. “What if I told you that this little object could be the key to a man’s happiness for an evening?”
‘“I’d say there’s no accounting for tastes,” said the shopkeeper.’
‘Only twenty minutes to King’s Cross. We put our clothes on, patched ourselves up, tried to look like train passengers. I felt everyone would see what we had been doing. Our pores were open. Our faces hung loose, eyes watery and cheeks still breathless. We tried to tighten the strings, to resume a mask of normality.
‘We peeped out of the toilet like children, and after one last kiss made our way back to our seats separately. I let him get off the train first. In case he was being met.’
‘I needed to know if I was imagining things or if there really was a connection between us. Something old, that still existed at a dream level. Then I had an idea: incubation. In the ancient world people would go and sleep in a special place – at a sanctuary or in someone’s tomb – to communicate with spirits or the dead. They thought that in your sleep you could have special access to non-physical beings. So I decided to try it. The best way to reach his unconscious was through a special place that was permeated with his being. He’s an academic – so that would be his office in the college. I decided to sleep the night there.’
‘In the end we found the rats’ nest under the palettes in the corner of the Engine Plant. The big ones scarper out of the building and there’s all these little babies left on the floor. Got their eyes shut, some of them. So I picked one up by the tail and put it in my overalls pocket. I went straight up to Griggs in Personnel. I go to his secretary and he comes out smoothing his hair like he’s got a nervous tick. “If it’s this story about the rats again…” he says, and I say, “You want proof, do you?” Then I just pulled out the baby rat and laid it on the secretary’s desk. It was kind of pink and curled up, but it squirmed a bit and opened an eye. “What’s this, then?” I said.
‘That put the cat among the pigeons. She started screaming and his face twisted like it was in an orange squeezer. He hid behind her yelling, “Get that thing out of here!” I turned and walked out.
‘After that they had to get in Pest Control to clear the place out.’
Reg leant forward and whispered to me: ‘It’s a pity, though, init, that it’s a bit harder to get rid of the real rats. The ones in suits.’
Lefteris took a sip of his coffee. ‘People use myths as universal god-given metaphors for living – especially Greek myths. Anyone struggling against insuperable odds, falling to their death, aiming too high, dying for a principle, wrestling with revenge, losing a child, or fairly much any other human dilemma, they can find characters and stories in the ancient Greek tradition which reflect it.’
Anthea asked: ‘Does that make you proud to be Greek?’
Lefteris put his coffee down, leant back and his face creased into a big smile. ‘I am proud to be Greek, of course. But not because of that. We had our moment. Like most of the so-called “great” times, it had the basis in imperialism, like you British with your Empire, and now the Americans. Those moments always pass.’
‘Kings Cross! Anyone for King Cross!’ the conductor called from the bottom of the stairs. The lights of the station splashed like melting stars on the glass of the bus window. Below, umbrellas scurried across the pavement.
The man at the front of the bus turned round again, looked at his audience and shook his head. ‘They talk,’ he said. ‘Any of you tossers spend the night in Abney Cemetery and tell me they don’t talk. There’s wise ones. Yeah. They’ll listen to your problems. Then there’s the unwise. You heard of the unwise dead?’
‘Leave it out, mate,’ chimed in a silver-haired man from near the back. ‘We got ladies on board here.’
ooks on Archive.
