by James Hannah
Everyone is laughing; Kelvin, close by me, is laughing hysterically.
I snort out my sinuses, get rid, get rid. Eject the stench. Is my nose bleeding? I’m bleeding, surely?
Miller has the bag closed. He observes the spectacle before him.
‘Ammonia. Now, if everyone will stop being so childish please, what we have learned here is that we need to be far more cautious when sampling odours in the laboratory.’
He holds the bag at a distance, wafts the odour towards his nose with a queen-like hand wave.
Vetiver: it’s the scent you’ve brought with you now, into my childhood bedroom at my mum’s house – at my house.
We’ve talked those few times on the phone, but the fact that we haven’t been in each other’s presence since we split up – what, seven weeks ago? – is made absolute and physical by the fact that I can smell your scent.
So there you definitely are, a full-grown woman in a heavy woollen outdoor coat, stylishly tailored for grown-ups who mean business, sitting on a young teenager’s exam revision chair. You look awkward.
I’m sitting on my squashy single bed with its double duvet. There’s nowhere else.
Rolling up the walls around us, the old wallpaper, James Bond-style rockets, carefully rendered. It had never occurred to me how carefully rendered they were. Like someone cared about the engineering. Just for a child’s wallpaper. You wouldn’t get that now. Mum has had no reason to redecorate, so the incongruous match-up remains.
This could be my past looking into my future.
‘So you’ve finished your exams?’ I say.
‘Finally. Don’t ask me how I did, because I don’t want to think about it. I’m heading off back to the Lakes for a month to stay with my mum before I start work.’
‘Oh right? Well, give her my best.’
‘I brought this–’ you say, meekly, holding up the crochet blanket. ‘I don’t really know why. You probably don’t want it.’
‘No, I do. I do.’
I take it from you and hold it, folded in my lap. It too smells of vetiver, and I remember you spritzing it before you went on your last work placement, months ago. You did it so I wouldn’t forget you. Now it means I won’t be able to.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘And I dug out some of my notes,’ you say, ‘and there’s a few leaflets and things that explain the basics. Stage 2 kidney disease: look at these sections here – they’re going to want to keep regular tabs on you, make sure there’s no more loss of kidney function. But the main thing is to keep your heart in good health. Cut out the smoking, get some exercise.’
And I can hear myself, my own voice, blundering and naïve. ‘Yeah? Oh, that’s a load off, I tell you–’
‘It’s serious. Please, please don’t go getting complacent.’
You shift a little in your seat. Maybe I was a shade snappy.
‘Anyway,’ you say, ‘it’s nothing that you can’t fold into your life – and hopefully there won’t be any more deterioration.’
I flip through a couple of the leaflets, and try to take it on board, but I’ll have to leave it till I’m on my own.
‘I brought you this, too. A bit of light reading.’ You hand over a hardback coffee-table book: Piet Oudolf, Planting Design.
It’s so easy for you even now to surprise me with kindness.
You smile happily, pleased I’m pleased. ‘It’s only a library book, but I thought it would give you some good ideas, a few things to mull over while you start getting used to where you’re at these days.’
I set the book down on the blanket on my lap and pat it to show gratitude. I allow myself to look at you, and you smile. ‘Thank you so much for making the effort, is all. I really appreciate it.’ I thumb the edge of the blanket.
‘Happy to help,’ you say. ‘Just because we’ve had our problems doesn’t mean I don’t care.’
‘I’m sorry I leaned on you so much,’ I say.
You look down in your lap. ‘It’s my baggage too. It’s – it’s not something I think I can cope with. That whole – trust area.’
‘I wasn’t straight with you, and I’m so sorry.’
‘Maybe it needed to happen. It was just too much hearing you say that, and seeing you not looking after yourself.’
‘That’s not me. That’s not what I want to be.’
I look at you and try to sustain your gaze, but you look away.
‘I can change, Mia,’ I say.
You look back at me, and some self-centred part of me had been imagining tears in your eyes. But they’re dry.
‘There are times when I want to let it all drop, Ivo. I do miss you, you know. But everything’s so up in the air at the moment. I’m going away, and when I come back there’s the new job – you’re coping with all this change with your health, and – it’s not the right time. It’d be better, don’t you think, if we just stayed friends?’
I look up into your eyes, and I see the kindness. And I realize I’d forgotten to tell myself what I should have been telling myself all along: remember never, ever to hope.
Crushed again.
‘Better to be friends – better than to have nothing at all,’ you say.
No.
Not better.
‘Maybe I’ll give you a call from my mum’s? In a week or two?’
Oh God, is it a good idea to string this on if it’s not going to come to a happy ending? Shouldn’t I just sever all ties now?
All I can think of is the photo Mal texted me shortly before you arrived. He’s found a flat.
But I can’t bring myself to tell you.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I say. ‘That’d be nice.’
Palm
SLIP AND SLAP of footsteps on the stairs. Bedroom door cracks open as my mum comes in.
I was awake anyway. I’m here where she left me, in bed, in my best church clothes.
It’s dark now.
She reaches down by my bedside table and squeezes the switch to turn the lamp on. She twists it quickly to the wall. Keeps it low.
The house has been silent since the last of the mourners left, and since Laura slammed her bedroom door in tears.
Mum sits on the side of the mattress, and I slide involuntarily into the dip.
She quietly raises her hand and strokes my hair.
‘How you doing, bab?’
I don’t say anything. I tighten the curl of my body around where she’s sitting, the warmth sealed between us. I know I don’t need to say anything. I know she understands.
‘Brave little soldier, aren’t you?’
I look up at her from where I’m lying. She’s still got her posh earrings in.
‘Are you OK, Mum?’
She looks down at me, but doesn’t answer straight away. She’s exhausted. It’s the first time I’ve ever noticed tiredness in her face, though it can’t be the first time, of course.
‘I’ll be fine, sweetheart. We’ll get through, you and me.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Listen, you don’t have to go back to school until you feel ready. Everyone understands you’ll want to take your time.’
I frown into the low light. ‘I want to go tomorrow.’
‘We’ll take a few days to – to think about your dad.’
‘They’ll think I’m silly.’
‘No one will think that, bab.’
‘I want to go and be like every day.’
Mum falls quiet for a moment, and sighs heavily. ‘OK. We’ll see how you feel in the morning.’
‘OK.’
She smiles down at me. ‘You’re the man of the house now, eh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Your dad was so proud of you, you know.’
‘He’d want me to go to school,’ I say, and return to looking across the low-lit room. She carries on lightly stroking my hair, before her hand slows, and finally ceases, resting on the back of my head.
‘Palm of calm,’ she says. ‘Can you feel my fingertips taking out all th
e worry and sadness? And can you feel the palm is pushing in warmth and love and happiness and peace? Can you feel it happening?’
I can feel it. I’m sure I can.
‘Palm of calm,’ she says to me.
I could do with a palm of calm now. The world is beginning to swirl around me. I can’t remember the last time I felt normal. What is normal any more? I imagine my mum’s palm on the back of my head. If I close my eyes, I can almost feel it.
Or your hand.
Your hand in mine.
My hand in yours.
Palms pulsing together.
An anchor – you and me drifting hand-in-hand through the world.
It’s the toxins. Karen said the massage could release toxins into my blood. The last thing I need is more toxins.
And the face: the face at the window has got me unsettled.
I’m vulnerable. I see that now. It’s like my body just needs to be started off, and it stays pumped full of adrenaline. Anxiety. Panic.
Sheila’s right, I have a panic-shaped hole in the middle. Fill it full of anything.
Quim
THERE’S NOWHERE ELSE to go. What’s Q?
I wish there was something else to say. What is there?
There’s only one thing.
Becca, on her big birthday weekend up in Mal’s northern stomping ground, her arms flung out, ten-to-two, standing in her bra and nothing else. No pants. Specifically, particularly, explicitly no pants.
‘I’m Queen Quim!’
I look at her, and I look away. I look again and I can’t even quite get what it is I’m looking at. It doesn’t register.
There it is, all things considered. The most mind-blowing thing I’ve ever seen.
I look at Mal, who’s looking at us with this expression of fixed amusement. Laura’s screaming and laughing, standing there in her black catsuit and cats’ ears.
Sometimes, you know, when you see the worst of everything lined up before you, you’ve just got to go for it. See how badly you can crash it.
Push your body to the limit. Sometimes, sometimes.
So I stand here shivering in the stairwell of a nightclub somewhere – I’ve no fucking idea where, or how to get back to the hotel – in some strange northern town. And I’m tripping. Tripping it out. Tripping you, tripping my health, tripping my future out of my system. Give up, give up. And it’s been nice and easy to surrender responsibility to Mal and Laura and Becca. If I shouldn’t be doing this, it’s up to them to tell me.
And anyway, one trip’s not going to kill me. It’s the general pattern that has to improve. And that can start tomorrow. If I want it to.
Becca strikes the pose just long enough to register for an eternity, her beaming white teeth in a Hollywood smile.
‘My knickers didn’t match my bra,’ she proclaims, ‘and it’s my best bra.’
I can’t look at it. It’s like the sun. A dark sun. Much hair, note. I don’t want to have seen it. I want to be a gentleman. And now she’s away, her buttocks revolving through the curtain and into the club beyond, followed by Laura.
What the fuck? I say to Mal.
‘It’s a fetish night,’ he says to me, and I’m focusing on his mouth by my eye. ‘They didn’t want to let us in, because it’s fetish gear only. So I struck a deal with them. We can go in if we wear one item of clothing only.’
Tonight’s been weird, I say.
‘You heard Becca,’ he says. ‘We’ve come here to find action, so let’s dive in.’
Ah yes, that’s why I’m here. Becca. You wouldn’t want to disappoint a girl on her birthday, would you? I haven’t seen any action for months, so let’s have some fun!
Becca the persuader.
Persuasive enough that me and Mal are now in a small side room with a wall of coathooks, and he’s throwing triangles as he wrenches his legs out of his trousers. He’s hopping, and talking.
‘Come on, man, it’s down to one item of clothing or less.’ He looks closely at me. ‘Are you with me, fella?’
Mm? Myeah.
‘We’re the lucky ones,’ he’s saying, pointing at my over-skinny legs. ‘One item of clothing, so we can go in there in our pants. Not like Becca, eh? Hats off to Becca, man.’
Pants off to Queen Quim.
‘Ha! Yeah. Pants off.’
The cool air shifts around me and tingles, my skin unused to expanse and exposure. I mean, it feels kind of – good. Feels a little bit magical. We descend the short flight of stairs into the colour-flushed club. A comfortable enshrouding darkness is flushed with primary colour lights in sequence, slow and simple. Sub-bass hip-hop throbs through, mellow, just nice. But, Jesus, what is this place? My eyes skip from one zone to the next, not wanting to rest, wanting to take in the general effect, follow the light pulse, illuminating now this group of people, now that group, now this. There are clusters upon clusters of squashy bodies, one or two completely nude, great folds of flesh, ruched up on the vertical from bumcrack to cranium, pleats of flab hanging down and out.
‘Make yourself at home, fella,’ says Mal, disappearing off. ‘I’m going to see a few people.’
He has that look. He’s on dealer duty tonight. That must be why they let us in. Got to keep the clients happy.
I wander around, my brain sloshing in my head. I take in the scene of merry carnage in front of me, pasty arses juddering as they rearrange themselves. The baldness, the red pates, now green pates, and the veins in their temples wriggling and throbbing, unembarrassed. I’ve got to steer myself away from this grimness, Britishness. Ugh. I don’t want to be here.
Eyes on alert to seek a familiar face, a family face, Laura: Laura’s there. There in her catsuit and cat ears. Almost familiar, switching deep red now green, her shiny stretched skin.
How did you know to wear a catsuit? I say.
She tips a wink at me. ‘I may have had a tip-off,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it brilliant? Look at everyone! It’s amazing.’
And I’m looking around, and when I look back at her she’s still talking and – how long have we been talking? And her lipstick lips are all in my face, and she’s talking and talking hard, her voice riding in and out of the bass beat.
And now I’m talking too, and all the words I’m saying are about you. I can feel myself talking fast, pouring out my problems, but the weight of them isn’t getting any less. Laura now, and Mal now, they’re hearing the sounds that I’m making, but my words aren’t conjuring the shapes on their faces. Maybe they’re not coming out right. Maybe I’m here just speaking in tongues.
‘She’s led you on,’ says Laura, ‘I know women like that, they try to control you. Make you into something you’re not. They’re all over you, they want to take over your life.’
No, no, it’s not like that at all.
Laura’s head nods rhythmically before me, butting in her version of the truth, like I don’t know what I’m talking about. But it’s not true, it’s not true.
‘You want to watch women like that,’ says Mal. ‘They shit you up, and then they nail you down.’
And here’s Becca, chilled Becca, swimming up in the dark.
An arm slips easily around my waist. It’s her arm.
‘Are you good?’
Yeah, yeah.
She looks deeply into me and her smile grows calmer, her eyes kinder. I can feel the dizziness rising.
‘Come here,’ she says, ‘come and give the birthday girl a dance.’ And she backs away and takes up my hands again, and we slowly dance, there, at arm’s length in the middle of the room, as the bass pulses around us, through the air, through the floor, through everyone in this place.
‘You miss her,’ she says.
Yeah.
And my throat is closed. And the tears – there are tears.
Becca places her forearm casually high up on my shoulder, and rests her fingertips against my neck and ear, and we dance, close.
That was the thing, the Becca thing: I’m Queen Quim!
I’m aware,
I’m so aware of what’s going on down below in the blue light. I have it about me now to stand discreetly clear. Wish not to scrunch up against the Queen’s quim. But the Queen’s not ashamed. She holds me close, gently close, unabashed.
‘Close your eyes,’ she says. I obey, and I feel her fingertips work lazily around my neck and earlobe and hair. ‘No need to see. Just feel. You need to feel better.’
I feel her hand work down from my neck, slowly, and take my right wrist, and move it slowly in space. She lands it delicately on her shoulder, my fingertips touching her neck.
‘It is so lovely to be held,’ she murmurs, turning, still constant in her movement, her naked bottom pressing into me. ‘The contact is everything, the contact is good. It’s good to feel good, and that’s just how it is.’
Switch off, switch off. I don’t want to think – I don’t want to think about you. You must never know this. Nothing of this would make sense. All of this time, I’m thinking of you. If I want you to know anything, I want you to know that. I’m thinking of you.
We move, we move, and I feel Becca’s fluid motion as my own, follow the shift and shimmy away across the room, my sealed eyes pulsing in the gloom.
‘Hey,’ she whispers playfully in my ear. ‘Let me take you away from all the people. Come through here.’
I open my eyes just as she disappears behind a heavy curtain hung from a scaffolding bar bolted to the black brickwork. I remain, swamped in deep green, switched now to harsh white. I lift back the curtain and step through into deep gloom and through a velvet drape into absolute black.
Rich black. Black like oily black. My eyes try to acclimatize by sending out blobs of colour and swirls of disturbance and imperfection. I’m seeing the imperfection in my eyes.
Floating, I’m standing still, and I can feel the liquids, the movement in my brain, slowly, slowly clockwise, resolving slowly, slowly anticlockwise.
And with the all-encompassing black, the acoustics are dead. My attention is thrown on the small foreground sounds. People. More than Becca. There is breathing down to my left. Slight shuffle far right. Slurping. The ticks and sibilants of licks or sucks. Simple innocent kisses, maybe.
