Clementine and Rudy

by Siobhan Curham

  Aha, so this is Tyler, the guy she was talking to on the phone the night we met. The guy who suggested we meet.

  “No, I’m intolerant of people’s fake food intolerances,” Tyler corrects.

  “I don’t have any intolerances,” I say. “Real or fake. So normal milk will be fine, thank you.”

  “No, thank you,” Tyler replies with a grin.

  “I’ll just go and get my art folder,” Rudy says.

  “Wait till you see what she’s done,” Tyler says over his shoulder as he fills a metal jug with milk. “It’s epic.”

  “Yeah well, I had Clementine’s poem to inspire me,” Rudy mutters before disappearing through the door.

  Again, my cheeks burn. I take off my hat and coat. I scoured my wardrobe for something cool to wear today, something more edgy like Rudy, but practically my entire wardrobe is sportswear. I settled on a black hoodie and jeans, with bright turquoise high-tops. I rummage through my bag as if I’m looking for something, surreptitiously watching Tyler as he works. I wonder if he’s Rudy’s boyfriend.

  “So, do you live in Brighton?” Tyler asks.

  “Yes, well, Hove, actually, so not that far away.”

  “Cool.” He takes the jug of milk over to the coffee machine and whips it into a froth. “I’m so glad you guys met.”

  “Me too.” If only he knew how glad. Right now Rudy and the prospect of doing some kind of collaboration with her is the only bright spot in my life.

  Rudy reappears holding a large black folder. “Shall we grab a table?”

  “Sure.” I follow her over to a small round table in the window and we sit down.

  “This is what I’ve got so far,” she says, unzipping the folder and pulling out some sheets of paper. “This is the ladder I’m going to use.” She passes me a black and white photo. “And I’m going to have her climbing it.” She passes me the drawing of a girl. Physically, it’s similar to the girls in her previous pictures – she has an Afro and brown skin but in every other way she’s different. For a start she’s climbing, and there’s a look of real determination etched into her eyes and mouth. Her outfit is brilliant. Skin tight jeans with silver DM boots and the tattoo of a lightning bolt on her cheek.

  “I love it.”

  “Here’s a mock-up of the backdrop,” Rudy says, taking a large sheet of paper from her bag. “On the night we put it up I’ll do this part in spray paint.” The backdrop is painted black, with a dusting of stars at the top and the sliver of a silver moon. Rudy points to the stars. “She’ll be climbing up to reach them.” I watch as she places the photo of the ladder onto the backdrop, then places the cut-out of the girl on top.

  “Wow!” I exclaim as the picture comes together.

  “I thought I’d stencil your poem here.” She points to a blank corner of the sky. I’ve done it in an old-style typewriter font but just say if you want me to change it.” She takes another piece of paper from her bag. My poem’s printed on it. She places it on the corner of the picture. “I was thinking of stencilling it in a bright colour, to make it really stand out,” Rudy says. “Maybe red like the jeans, or turquoise, like your trainers. I really like that shade.” She looks at me. “So, what do you think?”

  “It – it’s amazing,” I stammer. I’ve got the same weird feeling I had standing outside the café. The sense that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to be doing.

  “Are you sure?” Rudy’s cat-like eyes scour my face, as if she’s looking for evidence that I might be lying.

  “Absolutely. I can’t believe you got all that from my poem.”

  “Yeah, well, it was a bit like what you said about when you channel a poem. The picture came to me as soon as I read your words.”

  “It’s great, isn’t it?” Tyler says, arriving at our table with my hot chocolate and a coffee for Rudy.

  “It’s amazing!”

  “Cool.” Rudy sits back in her chair, the slightest of smiles on her face. “Now we just have to decide where to put it.”

  “What about on the wall by the seafront?” Tyler suggests. “Down by the kiosks.”

  “Could do,” Rudy looks thoughtful.

  “More people would see it down there,” I say, finding it hard to believe that I’m actually having this conversation.

  “What are you doing today?” Rudy asks.

  “Me? Oh, nothing much.” I instantly berate myself for sounding so boring. “Why?”

  “Could you go on a recce down to the front? Find a patch of wall we could use?”

  “Of course.”

  “Cool.” Rudy puts the papers back in her folder. “I have to get back in the kitchen or Sid’ll be threatening to put me in the juicing machine. Maybe you could message me later.”

  “Sure.” I force myself to smile to hide the disappointment that our meeting is over so quickly.

  “OK, great.” Rudy picks up her coffee and gets to her feet.

  As she goes back to the kitchen I sip my hot chocolate and try to process everything. Rudy is definitely hard to read, like a poem that’s laden with mysterious subtext and hidden meaning.

  “I reckon down by the old pier would be best,” Tyler says, coming back over to clear the table next to mine.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I reply. “I’ll check it out on my way home.”

  “I loved your poem by the way.” Tyler stops wiping the table and looks at me.

  It feels as if my body has turned to dandelion seeds, so light I could be blown away at any minute. “Really?”

  “Yeah. It was like I needed to read it. I needed reminding.”

  “That’s great. Thank you.” I wonder what it was he needed reminding of doing.

  “No, thank you,” Tyler says, with a grin.

  RUDY

  “You didn’t chat to her for very long,” Tyler says, coming into the kitchen and heading for the fridge.

  “Yeah, well, I’m at work,” I reply, preparing to slice some lemons. “Don’t want to get into trouble for skiving.”

  “You could have taken your morning break early if you wanted to chat to a friend,” Jenna calls over from the sink where she’s rinsing flour from her hands.

  “She’s not a friend, she’s just someone … I’ve done some art for. I just had to check that she liked what I’d done and she did, so job done.”

  “She seems really nice.” Tyler takes a container of strawberries from the fridge.

  “Well, we’ll see.” I hack into the lemon. As far as I’m concerned Tyler is way too trusting of other people.

  He comes over. “Are you sure you’re OK, sis?” he asks quietly.

  “Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” I feel a twinge of regret at lying to him but smother it down inside me. The truth is, I’m not OK. I’m not OK because Dave is moving in today. It was meant to be next week but this morning Mum had left me a note on the fridge: GREAT NEWS! Dave moving in today! See you later, honey… xxxx. So, when I get home from work this evening, he’ll be there, invading my space, coming between Mum and me. I know he was moving in anyway but I thought I still had one more week of normality, of just Mum and me. For some annoying reason my eyes start swimming with tears. The knife slips and I slice into my finger. “Ow!” It’s only a nick but the lemon juice really makes it sting.

  “Uh-oh.” Jenna comes rushing over. She’s super health-and-safety-conscious. We have about ten first-aid kits at Kale and Hearty and the slightest injury has to be recorded in an “accident book” Jenna keeps on top of the fridge. She gets it now, along with the nearest first-aid kit. “Let’s rinse it first,” she says, leading me over to the sink.

  I stick my finger under the cold tap and slowly it numbs the sting. Jenna pats my finger dry with some kitchen roll, then puts a sticking plaster over the cut. There’s something so tender about the way she does this that it makes me want to cry again. What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I so emotional all of a sudden? It’s not even like I’m due my period.

>   “There you go.” Jenna looks up and notices my eyes filling with tears. “Oh, Rudy, what’s wrong? Is it really hurting?”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m fine. I think it must be the lemon juice,” I say feebly. Like, since when has lemon juice ever made anyone cry? If only I’d been chopping an onion.

  Jenna looks at me for a moment, then gives my hand a gentle squeeze. “Why don’t you have your morning break now?”

  Why does she have to be so nice? It would be so much easier if she was a bitch of a boss, yelling at me for being careless. Then I could get angry, instead of feeling so pathetic.

  “OK,” I answer, feebly.

  I go back into the café. Tyler and Sid are busy serving a crowd of customers by the till. I’m about to take a seat at the counter when I see that Clementine is still sitting at the table in the window, writing in her notebook. I wonder if I should leave her to it. But if she sees me sitting at the counter she’ll think I’m ignoring her. And I wasn’t exactly overly friendly before due to my whole breakdown about the Dave-moving-in thing. Maybe I should slip back out to the kitchen. But just as I’m about to leave she looks over and her face breaks into a grin. I force myself to smile back and go over to her.

  “War injury,” I say, holding up my plastered finger. “I’ve been told to go on my break before the lemons kill me. Don’t let me interrupt you, though – if you’re busy?” I nod at her notepad.

  “Oh no, that’s fine.” She flicks the pad shut. “I was just having a writing rant.”

  “Really?” I sit down opposite her. Clementine doesn’t look like she’d be capable of the slightest grump let alone a rant but I remind myself that this is the girl who has funeral music as her ringtone for her stepdad. Maybe perfect waters run deep.

  “Yeah. It’s been one of those weeks.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  We sit in silence for a moment.

  “You can, if you want,” I say. “Tell me about it.”

  “Oh, right.” She looks out of the window, her cheeks flushing. “Do you ever feel like you’ve been cast as an extra in someone else’s movie?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when you look around at the people in your life and the life you’re living it all feels wrong. Like, this isn’t the way it was supposed to be.”

  A montage of random images flicks through my mind like a slide show: the apple in the art class, Dave, Mum lecturing me about going to university. There are so many things that don’t feel right about my life but it never occurred to me that this might be down to some kind of divine casting mix-up. For as long as I can remember, I’ve accepted that life can be crap, that it’s just the way of things.

  “Sorry, does that sound a bit weird?” Clementine’s face flushes redder.

  “No, not really.” I look at her designer sweatshirt, her heart-shaped face and her pale blonde hair. Why, when she’s been cast as the perfect princess, would she not want the life she’s living? “So, what kind of life do you think you should be living?”

  “One where I’m free to make my own decisions,” she replies instantly.

  “Yeah, but isn’t that every teenager’s dream?” I feel a horrible pang of doubt. What if she’s some spoiled brat who just wants to get her own way all the time? What if that’s the reason she’s unhappy?

  “I suppose so. Do you know what I hate the most?” she says.

  “What?” I hold my breath, praying she doesn’t say something like, I hate it when my parents don’t give me a big enough allowance or buy me a second pony.

  “When adults ask you what you want to be when you grow up.”

  “Oh God, I hate that one too!” I pull my chair a little closer.

  “Firstly, I hate the assumption that to be a ‘grown-up’ is some kind of aspirational thing. I mean the grown-ups I know are all so messed up.”

  “Yes!” I fight the urge to high-five her.

  “And secondly, why are they so obsessed with what you want to do for a job? What if you don’t know yet? And what if you don’t want your job to be your entire identity?” Clementine’s face is really flushed now and her eyes are sparking with anger. I feel the sudden urge to draw her, to capture the electrical charges pulsing beneath her perfect skin, bringing her to life, making her look way more interesting. “I have no clue what job I want to do when I ‘grow up’,” she continues. “All I do know is that I want to feel happy and I want to be free. And I don’t want to be messed up like the grown-ups I know.” She sits back and sighs.

  “Yes, sister!” I raise my hand. For an awkward moment she doesn’t understand what I’m doing but finally the penny drops and she laughs and high-fives me.

  “Sorry. I thought I’d got all of my rant into my notebook but clearly I was still a little angry.”

  “Don’t apologize. It’s all good.” And it is. I’m so glad I cut my finger and it brought me out here so we could chat. “That’s why I loved your poem,” I say. “It made me see a way out.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It made me realize that we shouldn’t focus on the things getting us down, we should focus on how we can get back up again.”

  She nods. “It’s funny. Even though I was the one who wrote it I still find it hard to actually do it!”

  “I know, right? When I was working on the art for your poem I felt so empowered but then this morning…” I break off.

  “What happened this morning?”

  “I found out that my mum’s boyfriend is moving in. I mean, I knew he was moving in, just not that it was going to be today.”

  “Oh God, you have my deepest sympathies.”

  “Yeah, I thought you might understand, after hearing the ringtone you have for your stepdad.”

  She laughs. “Absolutely. I think we need to take the advice of the poem and your picture. Let’s not focus on the people and things that are getting us down. Let’s focus on us and what we want to do and who we want to be.”

  “Preach!”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “Where?”

  “When you do the artwork.”

  “Of course. I’d kind of assumed that you would.”

  Her face lights up. “That’s great. When were you thinking of doing it?”

  “How about Sunday night? It’s a bit quieter then. Well, as quiet as Brighton gets. I go pretty late, though.”

  “How late?”

  “About one in the morning.”

  I see a flicker of doubt cross her face before she quickly replaces it with a smile. “That’ll be fine.”

  Tyler heads our way with a tray full of drinks and does a double take when he sees me. “Whoa!” he exclaims. “I thought you’d gone back to the kitchen.”

  “Yeah, well, I decided to take my break early.”

  He nods and grins knowingly. “Good idea.”

  I smile back at him. “Yeah, it was.”

  CLEMENTINE

  I get home from Brighton just before midday, my head buzzing. Even though it’s probably wrong to say this, I’m glad Rudy cut her finger and came back into the café. I feel so much better now that we’ve chatted properly and I was able to chip through her tough exterior, a little bit anyway. It was great when she started opening up about her mum’s boyfriend moving in. It’s good to know that we have evil stepdads in common. I’ll have to recommend some evil stepdad ringtones. As I take my shoes off in the hallway I hear Mum’s raised voice from the kitchen. I’m about to go and eavesdrop by the kitchen door when I see Damon sitting halfway up the stairs.

  “Hey,” I say, smiling up at him. Damon and I used to be really close. Until he was old enough to go to football and Vincent started paying an interest in him. Now that they’re football buddies it feels as if there’s a fracture through the middle of the family. Boys against girls. Men against women.

  “Hey,” he replies glumly. He’s wearing his muddy football kit. Something is definitely up. Normally Mum insists he goes straight for a shower when he g
ets back – and his dirty clothes go straight in the washing machine. There’s no way she’d let him sit like this on the pristine carpet.

  “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugs but I can tell he’s not, that there’s a sadness in place of his usual swagger. I sit on the stairs and I hear the low rumble of Vincent’s voice from the kitchen.

  “I take it they’re fighting again.”

  He nods.

  “It’s crap, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  I think back to how, when Damon was little, he’d come and snuggle up with me whenever Mum and Vincent had a fight. I move up to the stair he’s sitting on.

  “I don’t like it when he drinks,” Damon mutters, picking at a patch of dried mud on his knee.

  “Me neither.” Hope grows inside of me. This is the first time he’s said anything negative about Vincent in ages. I put my arm around his thin shoulders. He relaxes into me. “What are they arguing about?”

  “Dad not taking me to football this morning. Mum had to take me. He’s only just got up. I’m glad he didn’t take me anyway. He stinks of beer.”

  “How did it go?”

  “We lost, two – three.”

  “Oh, sorry about that.”

  “Do you want to come and watch me play one week?” He looks at me hopefully.

  “Of course. I’d love that.”

  Vincent’s always made such a big deal of football being his and Damon’s thing – a lads’ thing – he’s never once invited me.

  “Really?” Damon looks so surprised it really upsets me.

  “Of course! I’d love to see you play.”

  “Cool.” Damon snuggles in closer. It feels so nice I don’t dare move a muscle in case it makes him move away.

  The kitchen door suddenly opens and Vincent comes marching into the hall. “OK, OK, have it your way!” he yells over his shoulder. When he sees us the shock on his face is almost comical. “Oh, all right? What are you pair doing there?”

  “Having a chat,” Damon says defensively.

  “Oh, really?” Vincent looks from Damon to me. The whites of his eyes are stained red and his chin is flecked with grey stubble. “How do you fancy watching the Spurs game this afternoon, son? We can go round to Tommo’s.”