by Louise Voss
I began to sweat at the thought that Toby might have caught me hanging around outside Kate’s room.
“He’s in there now, is he?” I asked, as casually as I could manage.
Grace stood up, brushing a little piece of red LEGO off the knee of her tights and smoothing down her uniform. “Well, he was on his way to her room. He said he had something to do first.”
My heart leapt. Perhaps he’d been planning to sneak in to see me first; damn, damn, I wasn’t there, my own fault for—
Just then Ruby piped up. “Daddy went to do poo. In toilet,” she explained carefully. “Then he go thee my mummy.”
I was deflated. So much for the romantic notions. But if I hung out with Ruby for a while, then at least I’d probably get to see Toby when he returned, post-dump and post-visit.
“Will you show me how to play Animal Snap, Ruby?” I asked.
“I get cardth,” she said enthusiastically.
Grace laughed again. “Thanks, Helena. I’m just next door if you need me. I warn you, though. This may not be the tension-filled, fast-moving game you remember from your childhood, okay? ”
She swished out, waving gratefully at me as she went.
“Right,” said Ruby bossily. “Eye down.”
It took me a few seconds to realize that she wasn’t referring to my injured face, but was ordering me to join her where she lay on her tummy on the floor. I thought about the logistics of this—it was a small room, and I’d have had to lie with my legs wedged underneath an armchair, thus risking looking a total prat when Toby came back.
“Tell you what, Ruby. You lie there and I’ll sit next to you. Here, shall I deal?”
I sat cross-legged on the dusty carpet, split the pack of animal cards approximately in half, and gave Ruby one of the piles.
“I go firtht.” Very slowly, she selected two cards and put them facedown on the carpet. “Your turn,” she said.
Discreetly I turned one of Ruby’s cards over—a giraffe—before adding a zebra of my own.
Ruby put down a horse, faceup this time. “Horthey.”
I turned over a tiger. “Tiger.”
The game continued with a tortuous lack of speed, until I placed a pig on the pile, to which Ruby added an identical pig. There was a long pause.
I pointed meaningfully at the twin pigs. “Two pigs, Ruby.”
Ruby gazed blankly at them.
I tried again. “Look, Ruby, what do you say when you’ve got two cards the same? ”
Another blank look. Then, “Pigth?” she suggested.
“No. How about ‘Sn …,’ ” I began, waiting for her to catch on.
Nothing.
“Snaaaa …?”
Light finally dawned.
“NAAAAP!” she yelled, as if coming out of delayed shock, and grabbed all the cards. “New game now. Deal prop’ly, Ellna.”
I shuffled the pack and did as I was told. Ruby wiggled around on her stomach until she was lying next to me.
“Deal cardth on my botham,” she commanded, sticking her backside in the air and looking back at me over her shoulder, in a very sex-kittenish fashion.
I giggled. “On your bottom? ”
“Yeth, on my botham.”
Feeling perhaps that this was not entirely appropriate behavior, from either of us, but not wanting to risk her wrath, I obliged, dealing Ruby’s hand onto the seat of her stripy velour leggings.
Ruby roared with appreciative laughter and rolled around, scattering the cards around her. “More!” she shouted, and I began to laugh, too, flipping the cards one by one on the moving target of her little butt. I felt an unfamiliar stiffness in my chest, and worried for a second that I’d strained something, until I realized that it was just the exertion of laughing out loud after such a long time.
Ruby, encouraged by my response, was becoming more and more overexcited, squirming like an eel in a fishing net, and squealing with joy. I was just beginning to wonder how to go about calming her down a bit, when she flipped over onto her back, spread her legs wide, grabbed her crotch, and yelled, “DEAL THEM ON MY DINKY!”
Of course that had to be the moment that Toby appeared in the doorway. Ruby looked up at him.
“Nice poo, Daddy?”
For a second he and I gazed at each other, and then at Ruby, spread-eagled on the floor surrounded by animal playing cards.
Toby’s face was inscrutable. “Yes, thanks, Rubes.”
She beamed up at him. “Oh, good boy, Daddy!”
That was it. I exploded, belly-laughing until I was worried I’d pop open my skin grafts. To my relief, Toby joined in, and the three of us were united in a magic circle of cartoon zebras and lions and warm, briefly uncomplicated pleasure. Ruby ran over to Toby and he scooped her up into an enormous hug, which somehow seemed to include me, too.
“Grandma’s here, darling,” he said to her. “She’s with Mummy. Let’s go and see them.”
I began to collect the scattered cards, my spirits already beginning to plummet again.
“Stay there, Helena, would you? I’ll just drop Ruby off and nip back, okay?”
“Bye, Ellna, nithe to meet you,” said Ruby solemnly, puckering her lips into a fish’s mouth and pressing the tenderest little kiss onto my scarred cheek.
Those Middletons and their casual kisses, I thought, trying not to seem too absurdly pleased.
Once they were gone I spent a few minutes slowly tidying up all the toys, and then sat down and flipped through the very poor selection of tatty women’s magazines. I was just gazing at a recipe for a radioactive-looking zabaglione and wondering if Toby was actually going to come back at all this time, when I glanced up to find him framed in the doorway, looking at me. I jumped, in my skin and in my heart.
“Didn’t see you there.”
“Sorry. I did knock.”
I pointed at my ear, as if there might be a small OUT OF ORDER sign swinging off it like a novelty earring. “Not loudly enough, obviously.” I worried that he’d think I was annoyed, so I continued, “But it doesn’t matter. It’s good to see you. How’s Kate?”
Toby came in and sat next to me, dragging his chair closer so our arms were almost touching. “She’s okay. How are you?”
“Okay. You?”
We laughed at the small talk.
“I’ve missed you,” I said without thinking.
“I know what you mean,” he replied, tucking a strand of my hair back underneath my cap. “I’m so sorry, Helena, the way that I’ve been so … standoffish with you. I want to see you so badly, but when I do, I feel so guilty about Kate. And of course, I can’t let Ruby see the way I feel about you … she picks up on everything.”
He was looking so tenderly into my face that I didn’t even mind when he gently traced the scars on my cheek and eyebrow with his finger.
“Augenbrau,” I whispered, thinking of Sam, and how much she would have liked Toby.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said hastily, feeling silly. “God, Toby, what are we doing here? I don’t even know if there’s something between us, or nothing at all. You say you feel guilty about Kate. Were things bad between you before? ”
Toby leaned his head back in his chair in a gesture of desperation. “You have no idea what a complete and utter lowlife I feel when I think about Kate, but I can’t change the fact that I fell in love with you the first time we met. It makes me sick to think that I didn’t do something about it then, or in the months or even years since then, but you were away on the road, and by the time you came back to the U.K., I’d met Kate. I was afraid to organize another interview or a backstage pass to see you because I knew it would compromise my relationship with her. As it’s doing now.
“I do love Kate; she’s my wife and the mother of my child. But you …” He looked at me with such passion in his eyes that I almost forgave him for having a wife.
“I want to feel every bit of you next to me,” he whispered. “Please.”
“Except my no
se, if you don’t mind,” I said, grinning.
I stood up and straddled him in his chair, pressing myself against him until as much of our bodies as possible were connected. My stomach felt his stomach, my breasts touched his chest, my arms wrapped themselves around his back. Our lips met, and then our tongues, and finally, with a shiver of electricity we both felt, there was a clash of hard and soft at the heart of us.
That kiss went on even longer than the elevator kiss. It was the strangest and yet the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me—in a hospital, surrounded by death and pain, me and a married man nearly ripping each other’s clothes off. It was utterly surreal. But after crying together and laughing together, it seemed natural that Toby and I were practically making love right there in that chair, surrounded by watchful furniture and out-of-date women’s magazines. Perhaps it was the air of heightened emotion that existed in hospitals, the sense that nothing was as it should be, not perspective nor time nor even conscience.
I had no idea how much time elapsed. Just as I thought I was going to explode with lust, there was a sharp accusatory knock at the door. I leapt off Toby as quickly as I could and rolled back into my own chair, puce in the face and aching with passion and exertion. Toby adjusted his trousers and sat up straight, running a hand swiftly through his curly hair as if that would erase all the obvious signs of infidelity.
The door opened after a pause that seemed, even to us, discreetly lengthy. Grace came in and gave us both a very hard stare.
“Kate’s mother was just wondering where you’d got to,” she said to Toby, disapprovingly. “She wants you to nip out and get some toiletries for Kate.”
Toby didn’t dare stand up. He cleared his throat noisily. “Right, thanks. I’ll be there in a second.”
Grace retreated without another word, and Toby and I looked at each other mutely.
“Well, at least it wasn’t the mother-in-law,” he said with a straight face. I leaned over to kiss him again, but he groaned and pushed me away.
“No, please, don’t, Helena, or else I’ll never be able to … to get myself together,” he said, gesturing crotchward.
“Do you think Grace will say anything?” I asked.
Toby shook his head. “It’s none of her business. Anyway, I’m sure she wouldn’t. She didn’t even see anything, so it would only be speculation. For all she knows we might just have been playing an extra-exciting game of Animal Snap.”
“That’s Strip Animal Snap,” I said, and we laughed at the idea.
Eventually Toby was able to stand up, unencumbered. He touched my hand lightly. “See you later, then.”
“Will I?”
“I hope so.”
The door closed quietly behind him, and I was left once more thinking how incongruous it was to feel lustful in a hospital. All my other emotions, however, fit in quite well with the surroundings: confusion, guilt, longing. Grief.
Elvis Costello and the Attractions
OLIVER’S ARMY
I QUICKLY WORKED OUT HOW TO PLUG THE BASS INTO THE AMP, and what all the knobs and dials did. I also bought a book called Bass Guitar for Beginners, but did not pay it much attention because of its marked predilection for the dreaded scales. Instead I figured out my own method of playing, using a lot of chords as if it were a regular six-string guitar, my original choice of instrument. I loved the deep, almost sinister sound that the strings in harmony made. Physically, it was not easy to learn, and for weeks I played wincing with pain as the hard strings cut into my tender fingers. I dipped my fingertips in vinegar every night to try to toughen them up, and thereafter always associated that sharp smell with my early attempts to get to grips with the unwieldy guitar.
The theory, however, came easily to me, and I learned very quickly which notes sounded good with which others. Even though I didn’t do formal scales, I could soon perform rhythmical runs up and down the strings. I started playing along to the LPs in my collection, as well as composing more and more religious songs. I was in my element.
Finally, a few months after I started playing, I was allowed to teach the choir one of my songs at our Thursday-evening practice (a better number than my first creation, my songwriting mercifully maturing as rapidly as my guitar skills). We sang it in church that Sunday, with me accompanying on the bass. I didn’t get the standing ovation I had envisioned, but I got a healthy round of applause, and a warm glow of pride inside my chest. It was the best moment of my life.
I began taking my bass on the bus with me to school on certain days so I could practice in one of the three music rooms in the basement. They had quite good equipment down there—bigger amps and even some effects pedals. I had told the music teacher, Mr. Penfold, that I was learning to play, and he encouraged me to get involved with the school orchestra. I told him that I wasn’t quite ready for that yet, so he offered to give me a spot of coaching when he had a free lunchtime. It was very kind of him, and his occasional input did help me with the more technical and theoretical aspects of playing. The additional lunchtime practices really helped, too.
I became even more of an anomaly at school. Prior to my conversion I had overheard a boy refer to me as “that kinda cool, fat English chick.” I was aloof and withdrawn but was not really given a hard time, even about my chubbiness, because of the inherent cool-factor of my accent and charity-shop chic. At the age of fifteen, when the other girls were wearing bright pink blouses, rah-rah skirts, and stilettos, I dressed almost exclusively in black, or in men’s secondhand clothes. A few of the football-jock types threw the odd comment in my direction, but I never rose to the bait. I just thought they were all stupid. After I started going to church, and was seen at school associating with the “God-botherers,” people decided that I was even weirder, and much less cool than they’d thought. I knew this, but couldn’t have cared less now that I was bolstered up by the protective cushion of my beliefs. Yet when word got around that I played bass, the curve on the graph of my acceptability began to climb again.
One day I was sitting on the school bus, my guitar case propped up against the seat next to me, reading an old copy of Melody Maker that Sam had sent over to me a while back.
The boy behind me leaned over my shoulder. “Wow, Melody Maker. Awesome.”
I twisted my head back to look at him. He was cute, with big brown eyes and floppy blond hair. Not many active zits, just the purple shadows of past ones scattering his jawline.
“Yes, my friend in England mails them over to me.”
We got into a conversation about the English music scene and ended up talking all the way to school. The boy said he was heavily into Elvis Costello and Ian Dury and the Blockheads. He told me that his name was Justin Becker, he was in the year above me, and he had a band himself. He didn’t usually get the bus to school, but his bike was in the shop. He asked me lots of questions: my name, how long I’d been here, if I’d been to any gigs (I hadn’t), how long I’d been playing bass for. I answered him methodically, trying to keep cool but feeling, for the first time ever, the rush of adrenaline derived from fancying someone. Not very optimistically, I wondered if he was a Christian.
When the bus dropped us off outside the school gate, Justin said, “Well, nice to meet you, Helena. See you around, I guess. Good luck with the bass.”
He was gone before I could reply. I felt a bit let down that he hadn’t even invited me to see his band play. I thought about him all day, and at recess I asked Mary Ellen what she knew about him.
“Justin Becker? Oh, he’s totally the heartthrob of the twelfth grade. He always has a bunch of girls running after him. I didn’t know he had a band. Still, it figures, I guess. I hear he’s very arrogant.”
I was delighted to have been chatted up by a heartthrob but despondent that he had so many suitors already. I decided not to tell Mary Ellen that I fancied him. I didn’t think she would understand.
Except for glimpses from a distance in the hallway, I did not see Justin again for a couple of weeks. Aft
er a few days I put him out of my mind, remembering my vow of chastity and my commitments to the church. One lunchtime, however, I was down in the practice room plugging away on the bass when I felt someone’s presence. I turned around and saw Justin lolling in the doorframe watching me, chewing on a toothpick and running his fingers affectedly through his thick blond hair.
“Oh, hello!” I squeaked, embarrassed. I had been in a hurry that morning and had not realized until I got to school that I’d only applied mascara and eyeliner to one eye. I kept the naked side of my face turned stiffly away from him in the hope that he would not notice.
“Hi. Hey, you’re not bad, you know. What was your name again? ”
I was crushed that he’d forgotten. “Helena Nicholls,” I said, a little crossly.
“Want to be in my band? My bass player just left.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A real live band! Now, that was something I could write and tell Sam about.
“What sort of band is it?” I asked, playing it cool and trying not to appear as though my neck was in a brace.
“Well, you know, it’s like, I’m the singer, right? And, well, actually, that’s it right now. The guy who played bass left because Coach was gonna kick him off the football team unless he came to more practices. And we nearly got a drummer, but, like, his parents wouldn’t let him get any drums. But it’s gonna be awesome! There’s this other guy, Joe, who might join also, and he plays keyboards. So whaddaya think?”
Sounds pretty lame to me, was what I thought. “What kind of music?” I said instead.
“Well, sorta like Blondie, although with no girl singer, of course, or The Stranglers. We don’t have too many songs at the moment, mostly cover versions really. You write? ”
I nodded, hoping he wouldn’t ask me what sort of songs I wrote. I wasn’t sure about this whole thing. Half-assed were the words that sprang to mind. However, the idea of being in a band, particularly one that was just Justin and me, was undeniably appealing. I would get to go to his house and everything.
