by Amy Mason
Ida roared with laughter. “Brilliant, Alice, you’ve surpassed yourself. You look like some Bournemouth High Street nightmare. Nice tracksuit by the way.”
Alice took a deep breath and stepped into the doorway. “Get whatever you want from the kitchen. I can’t talk to you about this today. Go to sleep, you look terrible and you’re drunk.” She closed the door.
Ida kicked the side of the bed. She usually loved conflict, excelled at it in fact and was angry with herself for the tracksuit thing, she’d been doing so well up ‘til then. She unzipped her boots, pulled down her shiny gym shorts, took off her damp jumper and threw them all on the floor. She had no knickers on – she rarely wore them – so stood in just her falling-to-bits bra as she looked around the room, feeling her squishy curved stomach with her hand. How did you even get a stomach like Alice’s? Why exactly would you want one?
In the corner, to her right, was her mother’s old oak desk, piled with books and unopened post. Bills mainly, she imagined. She sat on the bed, unravelling the quilt her sister had thrown there, and took the things from her Tesco bag – a box of diazepam, Prozac, Marlboro reds, whisky, Wrigley’s Extra – and put them under her pillow. Then she reached for the pills, swallowed two, lay down, and stared at the ceiling. The streetlight from outside made an orange arc against the paper, and in the unfamiliar quiet she hummed to herself. Near the window a spider spun a web, and behind him a damp patch had made the wallpaper curl, revealing the edge of a rose petal pattern and causing her throat to once again itch with the taste of something she couldn’t quite place.
It was so light, the bed was so near the floor, and the birds were singing so loudly, that for a second Ida assumed she was sleeping outside. She was cold, almost naked on top of the covers, her neck hurt and she found it difficult to stand.
She picked up her cigarettes and wrapped herself in a sheet as she opened the door to the hallway and walked towards the kitchen, touching the chipped paintwork as she went. The walls were lined with pictures and photographs, dark frames from floor to ceiling, and a marble-topped table held bunches of white and yellow flowers among the dusty plants and handmade pots.
The kitchen looked like it always had, long and dim and narrow with 1950s units and a quarry-tiled floor. It seemed older of course, far more decrepit, but Ida was pleased to see her mother had relented and bought an electric kettle. She put it on and opened a cupboard, searching for coffee, and codeine, if she was lucky.
“If you’re looking for pills I chucked them all away.”
Alice was standing in the doorway, looking pretty and dishevelled in a fluffy pink dressing gown and a nightdress printed with teddies and hearts. The tracksuit wasn’t her pyjamas then, she actually wore the tracksuit out.
“I – shit, you spoilsport, Alice.” She had been going to deny it but she’d never win that way. “Do you want a coffee? I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch – I didn’t have any money for the phone.” Her hand went to cover her mouth, aware of the cold sore on her top lip.
“Can I have soya milk, but no sugar please?” Alice said as she sat down at the kitchen table and stared outside while Ida made coffee in silence. The back garden was more overgrown than ever and wild grass reached the handle of the French doors.
“Look I can’t be bothered with excuses or anything, leave it, seriously, but while you’re here you can help me,” Alice said.
“Okay.”
“I know what you’re like, you enjoy being a victim, and you’ll like to say I haven’t consulted you, so I want you to help me plan.”
“Okay.” Ida lit her cigarette on the cooker and watched as Alice went to the dresser, where a penguin Ida had made at school still sat, her tiny thumb prints all over his beak. She opened a drawer and handed Ida a brochure.
“Eco-coffins,” Ida read, “awesome.”
Alice sat and looked at her nails.
“It’s got to be a Manchester United one. Or one of these gold Egyptian things,” Ida said.
“I’m serious. It’s up to you,” Alice said. “I was thinking a willow one. Anyway, she wanted to go to the Catholic graveyard obviously, it’ll have to be the one in Charminster, and the funeral is on Tuesday at two – Father Patrick’s been so helpful. She always said she wanted to be buried as soon as possible, ‘the way the Jews do it’, but that was the earliest we could get. We have to sort out flowers and stuff and the wake – or whatever you call it –and who’s going to stay here. I’m letting Hendon’s, the funeral directors, take over most of it, I don’t care how much it costs.”
Ida was still reading. “Wait, we could get a plain cardboard one. It says here ‘some relatives choose to personalise these coffins with meaningful messages and drawings,’ she would have loved that. Ha! She’d haunt us for it.”
Alice put her hand over her eyes and Ida was surprised when she started laughing too. “God, imagine. We could get Terri to paint on a poem she’d written. Oh wait, Ida. You have to look at the card she sent. It’s in the sitting room. She’s outdone herself.”
Ida put her cigarette out under the tap and sat down at the table.
Alice scrunched up her nose. “What’s going on with you Ida? Honestly. You’ve practically got fucking dreadlocks.”
Ida’s hand went to her scalp and it was true, the back part of her hair was forming ropes. “You know my hair’s weird, this always used to happen when I was younger.”
Alice looked sceptical. “Not when you washed it.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake. Can we not talk about this?” She paused. “Where are you living now? Cornwall or wherever?”
“No, not for years. I moved when I left uni. I live in London. West Dulwich.”
“Dull-itch,” Ida laughed. “That’s not London, is it?”
She noticed Alice’s face. “Oh, is it really? Sorry, I don’t get out much. Well, don’t leave Camden much anyway. It sounds like the countryside or something.”
Alice just looked at her.
“When did you get here?” Ida asked.
“I’ve been here for ages on-and-off – months. You didn’t know that? Didn’t Da tell you? Fuck me.” She started to cry.
“Jesus, Alice, I didn’t know,” Ida said. “My phone got cut off for a bit…”
Over Alice’s shoulder she was surprised to see a man standing in the kitchen doorway, a short, skinny, dark-haired man with a big wonky nose and jaw-length shaggy hair. He was wearing a navy Adidas tracksuit top and faded red boxers and hovering, seemingly unsure about whether to join them. Ida noticed a patch of wee on the front of his underpants.
“Yes, I was here when she was crawling around and screaming in agony, and I was the one who found her having a fit and bleeding from the nose the other day. If you look at the sitting room carpet you can still see the blood. There was lots of it.”
“Fuck,” said Ida.
“Yes, fuck,” said Alice.
Ida looked up as the man walked over and touched Alice’s hair. She didn’t turn towards him, but instead looked straight and hard at Ida who shook her head.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. It’s over now I suppose,” Ida said.
Alice grabbed a silver candlestick from the table as if to strike her with it and Ida raised her arm to her face, exposing a hospital band.
Alice yanked it off Ida’s wrist, and Ida laughed, amazed.
“Alice, Alice, sweetheart,” said the man in a soft, northern voice. He held Alice’s chin in his small hand and twisted her face towards him. “Sweetheart, sweetheart,” he kept saying.
Alice pushed him away, looked at Ida and held up the white band. “How long have you had this on? Months I bet. Does it make people feel sorry for you? Did you overdose? I wish you’d fucking been here, honest to God. All your self-indulgent bollocks would have gone out the bloody window,” she said.
Ida was amazed at her luck. Th
ere was an audience here and Alice had proven herself, surprisingly, to be loud, angry and potentially violent. Ida looked at the man. She was still wearing only a bed sheet and let it slide down slightly, exposing her cleavage.
“I know you’re upset, Alice. But you’ve got to understand my relationship with her wasn’t like yours. She was horrible to me. I hated her. I was fifteen when I left and she didn’t give a shit.”
“You patronising bitch,” Alice said.
Ida stood and took the man’s hand. “I’m Ida,” she said, “nice to meet you.”
“Tom,” he said, “yes, you too.”
Ida had a reason to look nice, now, which outweighed even the chance to annoy her sister by wearing the clothes she’d turned up in. How’d she got him, Ida wondered, her humourless, anal sister with this scruffy, northern man?
She opened the airing cupboard in the study and was hit by the warm smell of lavender and damp. She started pulling things out – an expensive velvet dress with a tiny, tiny waist, a blue woollen skirt with a perfect, circular hole in it, lots of floral sheets, and some screwed up silk scarves. Her mother had been tall but slim-hipped like Alice and thinner still, and Ida stood at nearly six feet with big hips and breasts and thighs. Nothing was going to fit. It was only when in desperation she pulled at the top shelf that she had any luck. A pale brown tweed man’s suit, crisp from some ancient pressing, beautifully made with perfect stitches. The waistcoat was too small but the jacket and trousers were fine. She found a cream thermal vest, slightly yellowed, and wore it as a t-shirt.
Now for her hair. She stood for a moment at her mother’s so-called desk – the desk her mother never used – unsure whether to sit down or not. It was a dressing table really, with a dusty mirror attached to the back. She hovered, her fingers inches away from the surface, until reason took hold and with one action she pulled out the chair and sat down. As she cleaned the glass with her palm she could hear the muffled, urgent sound of her sister explaining something, or complaining about something, to Tom.
Stuck on the corner of the mirror was the typewritten quote that had always been there:
The theatre will never find itself again except by furnishing the spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams, in which his taste for crime, his erotic obsessions, his chimeras, and his utopian sense of life and matter, even his cannibalism pour out on a level not counterfeit and illusory, but interior.
(Antonin Artaud,
‘The Theatre of Cruelty: First Manifesto’)
Ida hadn’t understood it when she was young, but perhaps she did now.
She gazed at herself in the mirror and realised why Alice had been shocked at her appearance. Her skin was dry and sallow and there were purplish circles under her eyes, the corners crusty with black eyeliner from days before. She picked it out with her finger, and then examined the cold sore on the lip and the crusty spots that dotted her chin. Normally she wore a scarf wrapped round her head and without it her wiry dark hair was stiff and matt, unwashed for weeks now. Picking it apart proved useless and she opened a drawer, found a pair of nail scissors, and started to cut it off, first to a bob and then close to her scalp.
Long strings of hair fell onto the papers and carpet and into the drawers. She finished, chose a red silk scarf from the pile on the carpet, tied it round her head and felt cheered-up. There was a knock and she opened the door. Tom stood there smiling, dressed now in flares and a seventies cowboy-print shirt. He had an earring, a silver hoop.
“Wow,” he said and nodded as though he approved. Ida gave him a wide smile. “Time for a change I thought. Is Alice okay?”
“Yes, well, kind of. It’s been a difficult time. I thought – we thought – we could all go for a walk. To the beach maybe? Alice has gone for a jog, but when she gets back.”
“Would the countryside be okay? Or the heath? It’s pretty cool, there are snakes. I’m not a big beach fan.”
“Of course.” He looked relieved that she’d agreed. “That’s a bloody good suit, by the way.”
They listened to Radio One in the sitting room while they waited for Alice to get back, both drinking black coffee while Ida chain-smoked and talked about the songs that were playing, taking the piss or singing along while Tom nodded and made approving or disapproving noises depending on what was required. He would have liked a cigarette, Ida was pretty sure he smoked from the look of him, but she guessed he wouldn’t risk it around her sister.
The room was large with long windows at the end, and one wall was covered with packed bookshelves. In the far corner was a battered black piano no one could play and there was a TV on it, a new looking silver TV, which looked strange and out of place. On the left was a square, red brick fireplace filled with driftwood and pebbles and above it hung a huge poster that Ida couldn’t avoid.
Ida by Bridie Adair it read in rounded pink writing. Underneath the text was a black line drawing of a girl, roaring, her hair becoming flames, and next to her the same girl, naked this time, the line of her bare breast continuing and forming a lily. At the bottom some heavy square black words read: So Good, So Strong.
“You’d never get away with that now,” Tom said pointing at it. “Everything has to be rammed down people’s throats these days – five stars here, an Oscar there.” Tom was a film director, or rather the second assistant to one.
To the right of the poster was a large dark square outline on the paint, as though something had been moved from the spot. Ida stood and walked over to it, stroking the wall with her fingers.
“Is everything okay?” Tom asked. “Hey, give us a drag.”
She handed him her fag.
“Yes, well no, it’s just there used to be a painting here, of my mother,” she said, looking around the area as if she might find it. “It belonged to me. It’s one of the reasons I came back.”
On the sideboard were more flowers and cards. She read a few until she found the one – hand painted – that had to be from Terri.
“Wow,” said Ida.
“Fantastic isn’t it? Your stepmum sounds like she’s something else. I can’t wait to meet her.”
“So as you sleep in Jesus’ arms, you rest now, happy, free from harm, we’ve had our struggles, that is true, but dearest Bridie we’ll miss you, Terri Irons ’99. She signed it. A fucking condolence card,” Ida said.
“I know, that’s the icing on the cake,” said Tom, laughing.
“I only remember poems about cats and birthdays. She’s obviously matured as a writer since I’ve been gone,” said Ida.
She put the card back down and moved towards the mantelpiece, where there lay a carved stone ashtray, a tortoiseshell hair clip, and a framed photo of Ida and Alice as children, grinning and frizzy haired in their boaters and school blazers.
“Fucking hell,” she said, picking it up and revealing a bottle of whisky that the photo had hidden from view.
“Apparently she had hiding places all over the house,” he said seriously.
Ida winced. Did he think she didn’t know that? That he knew her mother better than she did?
“Well, Alice won’t like that. Waste not, want not,” she said as cheerfully as she could and went to put the bottle in her room.
Alice showered after her jog and came downstairs in a red high-necked sixties shift dress, blue Adidas Gazelle trainers, and a white mohair cardigan. A satchel was slung across her front, covered in colourful badges.
“Still a ‘Bournemouth High Street nightmare’? Will I do?” she asked.
“It was your tracksuit… ”
“Yeah, the tracksuit that I wear to do exercise – mental.”
“Well, you look nice. I like your shoes,” Ida said. She really did.
“Thanks,” said Alice, not quite sure if Ida was taking the piss. “You’ve still got those boots. I couldn’t believe it when you turned up.”
Ida lifted her leg and showed Alice the sole. “They’re on the way out. Full of holes. I did get them from a charity shop about fifteen years ago, though.”
“Shall we go?” Alice asked. “We can’t be long, Dad’s asked us for lunch. Tom still hasn’t met him.”
Ida followed as Alice took Tom’s hand and stepped outside.
It was a breezy day and Ida’s head felt cold without the thick hair she was used to. She yawned. The house had made her tired.
They walked along the road, past flash cars, Ida increasingly impressed and disgusted by how fancy the area had become. She wouldn’t mention it now, she knew she’d better not, but she wondered how much they were going to get for the house. There’d be debts, that was certain, but surely they’d each be in for a decent sum – enough for a deposit on a flat or Alice’s wedding to this indie-schmindie dwarf. She wished she could feel more excited. But the truth was she felt scared. She knew she was terrible with money, she had been all her life, and that in her hands even fifty grand could be fifty quid by the end of the month.
They reached a battered Mini. Ida expected Tom to drive and was surprised when her sister walked round to the driver’s side and took some keys out of her satchel.
“What, you’re going to drive, Alice? You can drive?” Ida asked.
“I’m twenty-six,” said Alice.
“Oh, okay. Wow,” said Ida, squeezing into the back seat.
“You can’t drive?” asked Tom, from the front.
“She can’t even walk in a straight line,” said Alice as she put on her seatbelt.
They were silent in the car, seemingly regretting the idea of the walk. Under normal circumstances Ida would have suggested the pub and it took a great deal of strength for her to swallow that suggestion each time it came to her lips. Tom drummed on his knees incessantly – something Ida was sure was driving Alice mad – and took the fact that her sister stayed quiet, politely, as an indication that their relationship was still pretty new.
The heath was not how Ida remembered it and she was almost embarrassed. Instead of the snakes she had promised Tom there were used condoms and crisp packets, power lines stretched overhead and in the distance stood a new housing estate, rows and rows of red-brick boxes and gaping black windows. It was massive, that was still true, a great dirty expanse of scrubland, reined in by a wide, humming road.
