Looking for Alex

by Marian Dillon

  When I first met Alex I accepted her family life in the way that you do, at that age. Then as I got older I did begin to question the lack of communication, the lack of warmth towards each other, but as it never seemed to bother Alex I didn’t let it bother me. Later still, I stopped going there, as Alex was always at ours.

  *

  When we reach the sprawling suburbs of London my armpits begin to prickle with nervous sweat. For distraction there’s only Radio 1 and the conversation the girl next to me is having with her friends in front. They’re all students, going to some party in London. They sound excited and I wish I were like them, on a coach with a friend, having a laugh. I wish Alex were here but then think that’s stupid, because I’ll be with her soon. Then slowly it begins to dawn on me that I’m not just anxious about the unknown but about the known, about seeing Alex again. Nothing about Alex is obvious any more.

  It doesn’t help when she isn’t there to meet me.

  I wait at the barrier of Platform 11, Victoria Coach Station, watching the last of the passengers disembark and pick up their luggage. Ten minutes go by and I try not to panic by telling myself that if Alex never turns up I’ll just get on another bus and go home. The burly coach driver notices me as he secures the bus to go for his break, Daily Mirror tucked under one arm and jacket slung over his shoulder. For a few seconds I see what he sees, reflected in the glass of the sliding bus door: a curvy girl in tight black jeans and pumps, skinny white T-shirt, leopard-skin belt, and my old school blazer with a Clash badge on one lapel and Siouxsie in studs on the back. I’ve tried to reproduce Siouxsie’s hair from a photo in NME — backcombed high with a little feathery fringe. The detail of my painstakingly drawn eye make-up is lost in the sheen of glass but the general effect is there — dark wings that wrap round my eyes like a pair of shades.

  I surprised myself this morning, when I looked in my parents’ full-length mirror and saw what I could achieve when they weren’t around. You’re dressed to impress, girl, I told myself, grinning at my reflection. And then there was a heart-thumping moment as my gaze switched to the bedroom behind me. I stood quite still, taking it all in: little pots of cream and powder on the drawers; dressing gowns hung side by side on the back of the door; the faint scent of Youth Dew, my mother’s favourite perfume; the quiet ticking of the bedside clock. The room seemed to cling to me and its safe familiarity induced a rush of doubt that set my chest pounding. My eyes switched back to the girl in the mirror. What are you doing?

  The driver interrupts my view, coming to stand right in front of me. Sweat trickles down his face and he wipes it away with his sleeve.

  ‘All right, sweetheart?’ he asks. ‘Someone not turned up?’

  ‘She’ll be here any minute,’ I say. ‘She’s always late.’

  He shrugs. ‘Okay. Need any help the office is over there.’

  He sets off across the concourse, unfurling his paper as he walks. A small queue is beginning to form for the next departure and my stomach knots itself a little more. Then I hear a soft whistle from behind and there’s Alex, lolling by a concrete pillar, grinning.

  ‘You’re bloody late!’ I cry, relief putting an edge on my voice.

  ‘No, I’m not… I’ve been here for ages. Just making sure.’

  I drag my bags over. ‘Sure of what?’

  ‘That no one was with you.’

  ‘What? Do you think I’d do that?’

  ‘No — but I didn’t know if anything had gone wrong, did I? Suppose your parents had found out? You wouldn’t exactly be able to let me know, would you?’

  We pause for breath, then Alex moves forwards and we hug the life out of each other, squealing and giggling. She smells of cigarettes and shampoo and something else I don’t recognise. She feels thin, but I’m not sure if that’s new; we’ve never really hugged that much. Stepping back, I look her up and down, noting small changes. She’s wearing her God Save the Queen T-shirt, a red tartan skirt and her Doc Martens, all of which I’ve seen before. But her hair is different — not spiky now, but a wild, tangled halo, on top of which sits a beret that matches the skirt. And although it’s warm she wears a leather jacket that’s crawling with zips and badges. That’s new.

  ‘Where d’you get this?’ I ask, tweaking it.

  ‘Camden Market. We’ll get you one. You’re gonna love it here, Beth. It’s so cool, there’s so much second-hand stuff and it’s dirt cheap.’ She nudges me. ‘Come on, we’re getting the tube.’

  I let her lead the way, marvelling at her total ease in this huge city — that after a few weeks she knows where she’s going, what she’s doing and how everything works. As I follow her certain things begin to surface from a distant memory of my last visit, when I was just ten years old: the underground’s singular scent of warm dust and hot metal, the jostle of people on the street and the massive buildings that dwarf them, a feeling of ant-like insignificance and yet of being at the centre of the universe. The idea of having to negotiate all this on my own would be scary, but Alex shows no such fear. At times I’m almost running to keep up with her, along crowded pavements that buzz with alien accents and languages, trying not to gawp at the unfamiliar: groups of Japanese tourists with monstrous cameras slung round their necks, or Arabs in full sail, the women’s eyes peeping out from black shrouds, trailing their men like a brood of ducklings.

  ‘Poor things,’ I say. ‘Imagine living your life in a tent.’

  ‘I wouldn’t feel too sorry for them,’ Alex throws back at me. ‘They’re filthy rich and they own half of London. They’re part of the established order.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘You know. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. They’re all in it together.’

  ‘They?’

  Alex gives me an amused smile and I feel strangely anxious.

  ‘The rich. Capitalists. The property owners.’

  I can’t remember her being too bothered by this before; our punk sensibilities had only stretched as far as despising songs by David Soul, or Abba, and scorning anything to do with the Silver Jubilee.

  ‘I don’t suppose the women have much say in anything. And I still wouldn’t want to be treated like I’m owned, like I’m someone’s property.’

  We turn into the underground and the conversation gets lost as Alex shows me how to work the ticket machine.

  On the tube she keeps up a torrent of questions, wanting to know everything that’s happened after she went. I feed her answers, knowing the questions I need to ask will wait. If it all seems a little narcissistic — What does everyone think of me? What did they say at school? What do people think has happened? — I let that go. She never once mentions her parents. Finally, as we emerge from Camden Town station into weak sunlight she seems to remember that I’m not just an extension of her.

  ‘Where do your mum and dad think you are?’ she asks.

  ‘At home.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘They went to Jersey for two weeks yesterday. After they’d gone I told Karen I was going camping.’ Alex turns her head, stares at me, nearly bumps into someone. We giggle, and I feel suddenly warm, proud of myself, pleased by the glow of admiration in Alex’s eyes. ‘I said if Mum and Dad ring tell them I’m with Hilary and Rachel. They like Hilary and Rachel.’ I realise how that sounds. ‘I mean, they think they’re sensible.’

  Alex snorts with laughter. ‘Well, that’s because they are! Thank God for you, Beth.’ She tucks her arm into mine, and I pray that she won’t guess how far my liking for a little excitement is being pushed.

  ‘So how long have you got?’

  I hesitate. ‘I told Karen one week.’ I don’t say that I’ve taken two weeks off from my Woolworths holiday job. If I decide to stay longer I’ll tell her then. ‘Karen’s supposed to be looking out for me, but I think she’s glad to get me out the way.’

  ‘She still with that Richard guy?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  My head spins as I catch sight of a huge crowd of punks, m
oving along the road in a swarm of leather and tartan and chains, holding up traffic as they swagger across a busy street, their progress marked by crests of hair. I catch the eye of one of them and there’s a flicker of acknowledgment of my membership of the club, not so much a nod as a tiny tilt of the chin. Compared to them I’m on the margins, but, still, I like that he noticed me.

  ‘It’s punk city round here,’ Alex says. ‘I love it.’

  A crowd of backpackers separate us for a few seconds.

  ‘Alex, who are you living with?’

  ‘Beth, look there. That’s the Post Office Tower.’ She grabs my arm, pointing up to where it sits in a gap between buildings. ‘The one with the revolving restaurant — it spins round while you eat.’ She pulls a face. ‘Think I’d be sick. And, Beth, see the Doc Martens shop? The Sex Pistols go there.’ She drags me over and peers in, as though we’ll see Sid Vicious lacing up his boots, winking at us through the window. The shop is full, alive with leather and chains and rainbow hair. ‘We’ll go in one day. Have a look round.’

  ‘Are you staying near here?’

  ‘Not far. Come on, let’s go. Give me your bag. I’ll carry it for a bit.’

  We tear ourselves away from the window. After walking for another ten minutes we take a left and a right, past a warehouse and some lock-ups, finally turning onto a sorry-for-itself terraced street. Empire Road. The houses are big, four storeys high, with steps down to the basement and more steps up to the wide front doors. I guess they once housed wealthy families, with maids and servants. Now each house has a long strip of buzzers with the names to one side. There are one or two exceptions but mostly the paintwork is peeling, the masonry crumbling, and the tiny scabby gardens are dotted with litter and dog shit. Above our heads reggae spills out and two people argue loudly.

  The excitement of being in London gradually recedes, replaced by a quiet dread that feels like a lead weight in my belly. I’m torn between an urgent need for a toilet, desperate to reach somewhere — anywhere — quickly, and a strong desire to turn back and head for home.

  ‘We’re just down here,’ Alex says. ‘Number twenty-two. The green house.’

  I look down the street and see a house that’s distinguishable, not by the colour of the door, but by the bricks themselves, painted a sludgy, olive green.

  ‘We go round the back.’

  I follow her, hesitantly, round the corner of the street and down a back alley that smells of cat pee. On each side are wooden gates that lead into the gardens. Alex pushes against one of them until it gives way reluctantly, scraping the ground, then steps aside to let me go first. I look through and stop, hear myself catch breath. Behind me Alex laughs.

  ‘Surprised?’

  I’m looking at the most perfect garden. Perfect not because it’s orderly, but because it’s bursting with colour, rippling with light and shade. Everything is gloriously wild and overgrown — shrubs, plants, lawn — so that the narrow path snaking through the middle of it all is only just visible. The walls on both sides have tiny ferns sprouting from between the bricks and lean drunkenly in places. To the right of the gate is an apple tree with hard green fruit the size of conkers, and beyond that a large buddleia. I know its name because Karen and I bought one for Mum a few birthdays ago. I recognise its sweet, honeyish smell and pointy flower-heads, the way it hums with insects and quivers with butterflies. In front of them is a small vegetable patch, sprouting rows of baby leaves like rabbits’ ears.

  ‘Like it?’ Alex’s voice swells with pride.

  ‘Like it?’ I say. ‘It’s fantastic!’

  ‘Fitz looks after it mainly — he plants all the vegetables. Celia sometimes helps, but she’s been ill.’ She tugs on my arm. ‘Come on.’

  We thread our way down the path, straggly shoots from the nearest plants snagging our ankles as we pass. The back door lets us into a gloomy kitchen. Alex crosses to the hallway and shouts, ‘We’re here!’ She looks back at me. ‘I should tell you, me and Pete, we’re, like, together.’

  There’s defiance in the set of her mouth. I just have time to wonder what that’s about and why she’s waited until now to tell me before a man appears at the kitchen door, in jeans and a ban the bomb T-shirt. He snakes one brown, scrawny arm around Alex and pulls her towards him.

  Chapter Two

  15th May 2013

  ‘Come round for dinner,’ Dan had said to me as he walked with me to the tube that first evening. ‘I’ll get Fitz round too. It’ll be good fun.’

  Which wasn’t quite the word to describe how I felt now.

  The journey here had spun me into a trance of recollections: love in a dusty bedroom; punks on the streets of London; a wild, perfect garden; space and the cold sea in Wales. And a house smashed open and turned upside down. I explored them gingerly, like hunting through a cobwebby loft where spiders lurked. Don’t look in that box. Mind that dark corner.

  When I stepped out onto Islington High Street and suddenly Fitz was just ten minutes away an underlying anxiety surfaced, crawled onto my skin. I worried that the older me would disappoint Fitz. I worried that he would disappoint me. I feared being treated like one of the complicated women Dan had alluded to, greeted with an undercurrent of embarrassment, shuffled off with relief.

  And underneath all of that was the fear of finding Fitz like a stranger, that we’d have nothing to say to each other.

  Dan lived in a Georgian terrace, a tiny Play School house, with squared windows on the ground floor, arched ones on the first, and a postbox-red front door. It looked inviting, the sort of house that would curl up around you, but at the door I hesitated, summoning the courage to ring the doorbell and enter the surreal moment when I would see Fitz, the man who inhabited my dreams for many years after he so briefly inhabited my life.

  Finally, anticipation overcoming nerves, I put my finger on the smooth, brass button and pressed.

  ‘Beth, hi! Come in, come in.’

  Dan drew me into the house, introducing me to Martin along the way, a slightly plump, teddy-bearish sort of man. We went through to a kitchen-diner at the back, where French windows led out to a small London garden, paved and gravelled and scattered with pot-plants. The barbecue was lit.

  ‘Fitz just rang,’ Dan called from the kitchen, fetching white wine from the fridge. ‘He’s going to be late.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Something about something he had to do before tomorrow.’

  Martin smiled sympathetically, which left me wondering if that was a ‘wouldn’t you know it, he’s always late’ sort of smile, or if it was more sinister, as in, ‘he didn’t really want to come’. Dan handed me a glass of wine and said to make myself at home. On the table there were smoky pistachios and plump green olives to nibble. I picked at them absently, gulped back wine, answered questions, fretted about Fitz. Fifteen minutes passed, then thirty, and Martin said he thought he should start cooking while the coals were hot.

  ‘We can keep things warm in the oven,’ Dan agreed. ‘He’ll be here soon.’

  Humiliation crept through me; I covered it with smiles and seamless conversation. When the doorbell finally rang Martin was flipping burgers, his forehead glowing with sweat, and Dan busy ferrying trays of hot food to the oven.

  ‘Can you get it, Beth?’

  I walked through the hallway, darkening now and cool, and pulled open the heavy door.

  ‘Hello, Fitz.’

  ‘Beth.’ He had one hand stuffed into his jeans pocket; the other held a bottle of wine; I saw his eyes taking me in, re-learning my features like a map. I brushed back my hair, smoothed down my dress, sucked in my stomach. Fitz shook his head. ‘Wow. Look at you.’

  He’d lost none of his Irish accent, and I could see that Dan was right; I was looking at the same old Fitz. He might have put on a little weight but it would be measured in pounds, not stones. There were the requisite lines around the eyes and mouth, a slight jowly look settling onto his face, hair colour fading, but the essential ingredients wer
e the same.

  The only photos I’d ever had of Fitz were some we took in a booth at Victoria station, a strip of four grainy black and white prints, us crouched close, my cheek pressed to his, that slightly mad look that you got when you were trying not to laugh. We’d cut them in half and kept two each. I’d had mine for years but they finally got lost in some clear-out or other. Then I had to keep his face in my imperfect memory. Here was the older version of it. The thin nose that leant to the left, the twist to the lips when he smiled, eyes that creased like Dan’s, the tilt of his head as he stood and looked at me, hair not grey but with that salt and pepper look.

  Fitz came up the steps, apologising for being late, said there’d been some school report he’d forgotten to do. He stood still in the hallway beside me, looking uncertain now, and the space between us crackled with tension. I was remembering the last time I’d seen him, in the kitchen of Empire Road with my father glowering at us both. Then, we hadn’t been able to say goodbye properly; now we hardly know knew how to say hello, frozen into this smiling moment.

  ‘You look good,’ I said.

  ‘You stole my line.’ He grinned. ‘Actually you look amazing. How many years is it?’

  I shrugged, although I knew precisely. ‘Too many. But thanks.’

  ‘Okay, enough of the compliments.’ He was looking at me keenly now, as though peering through layers of time. ‘How are you?’ It wasn’t a throwaway line but there was no time to give the answer it required.

  ‘Fine, thanks. Yes. And you?’

  He said yes, good, and I noticed how one hand strayed up to the back of his neck as he contemplated what came next, that old gesture.

  ‘It’s great to see you.’ He stepped forward then and lightly kissed my cheek, one hand grazing the small of my back.

  Then Dan called from the kitchen, ‘Get the fuck down here, Fitz, before this food is incinerated,’ and we laughed, relieved.