‘Beth? Can I come in?’ He stands by the bed. ‘What happened?’
‘Pete happened. I argued with Alex and then I argued with him and then he said that Alex couldn’t ever tell me stuff because—’
‘Hey…don’t let him get to you.’
He sits down next to me and takes one of my hands in his. His is small, fits mine perfectly.
‘Maybe I should go home now.’
‘Do you want to?’
‘I don’t know. I won’t know how to act, knowing all this and pretending I know nothing.’
‘I suppose you’ll have to face that some time.’
There’s a strange comfort in this logic. Today, or next week, Alex won’t come with me, and I’ll have to carry on my ordinary little life that’s changed for ever.
‘I’ve got five more days,’ I say. ‘What’s the point, though? I might just as well go.’
Fitz squeezes my hand. ‘Stay.’
He leans over and kisses my cheek. Turning towards him, I see a self-deprecating smile on his face, his head tilted, bird-like, to one side. I can see that with one word from me he will back off, that he’s preparing to retreat already. I know that things are going to get horribly complicated and that the five days left will take on a completely new significance. I move my face closer and meet his lips in a chaste, still sort of kiss that is unlike any I’ve had before.
Chapter Four
1st August 1977
I’ve not had many boyfriends before, never got beyond messing about in the park or in some quiet little corner at the disco, although I was tempted, once or twice. I knew other girls at school were having sex, I’d hear them talking about it in loud voices. Sometimes Alex joined in with them and I’d say, Alex, is there something you haven’t told me, and she’d say no but she wasn’t going to let them think they were having all the fun.
Now I know I want to sleep with Fitz. The knowledge that soon I’ll be boarding the bus back home helps to concentrate my mind.
We lie on his bed, kissing, hands exploring, until I begin to ache with wanting him. And then we are pulling at each other’s clothes – zips and buttons, hooks and eyes. It’s like something I have to get out of the way, this first time, and we only pause long enough for Fitz to ask if I’m sure, and for him to find a pack of condoms, and then it’s over quickly, too quickly.
‘Don’t worry,’ Fitz says. ‘It’ll be better next time. I’ll be better next time,’ which is when I realise I wasn’t the only one to be nervous.
I say it doesn’t matter, next time’s fine, which is sort of true, because for the moment I’m revelling in just lying here next to him, loving the feel of his skin on mine. I place my head against his chest, and hear the thud of his heartbeat gradually slowing. As Fitz trails his hand down my belly I look up at him, and a wide smile spreads across my face, like butter on toast. Fitz grins.
‘I think you could get used to this,’ he says.
By the evening he’s moving all his stuff back upstairs and for the whole of the next day we hardly move from the room. The only time I leave the house is to call in sick for him from the phone-box down the road, saying that he has chickenpox. We have no idea how long you need to be off work for chickenpox and the hotel say they will need a doctor’s note, but at the time it doesn’t seem to matter.
Everything changes. I feel invincible — no barbed words from Pete can touch me now — and at the same time totally vulnerable, filled with the piercing knowledge that I’ve begun something I have no way of controlling. I’ve let someone in and right from the start I’m scared by the intensity of my feelings for him, because maybe he won’t feel the same, maybe for him I’m just another girl. There’s no way of knowing. And if he does feel the same, how can we make this last? In a few days’ time I have to go home and back there Fitz doesn’t exist.
Sometimes I’m tempted to say, ‘What’s going to happen when I go?’, as though we can make something happen, but I always stop myself so that he has no chance to say, ‘Just enjoy what we have.’
Alex doesn’t help.
‘Fitz is a great guy to practise on,’ she says one day, when Fitz has gone to the shop for milk. ‘I mean, you just know he won’t mess with your head. He’s the perfect person to lose your virginity to.’ When I don’t answer, staring out of the kitchen window at a fine drizzle, she looks up from making tea for her and Pete. ‘Uh-oh. You like him, don’t you?’
The word ‘like’ contains more meaning than any word should, and at the same time is too feeble to describe the way I’m becoming so totally drawn to Fitz. I wonder then if that’s how Alex had felt, that it wasn’t just the flight from home but the pull towards something. Towards Pete, towards sex, towards a relationship where she felt wanted. Which she clearly does; Pete wants her around him all the time and is always touching her, and suddenly I can understand that. When Fitz’s hands aren’t actually on me it’s as though they’ve left an impression on my body; sometimes my skin crawls with desire and I have to find him, hold him.
Still, watching Alex with Pete, I can’t help thinking there’s something missing. I say this to Fitz one day while he’s searching his pile of records for an old Alex Harvey album. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and I’ve been reflecting on all this while waiting for Fitz to surface from sleep. I watch him, crouched naked over the records, looking at all the little bumps along his skinny spine; it’s the same only different from the first day I met him. How quickly all this has happened, to have got from being nervous with a stranger to feeling like I belong here in his bed.
‘Sometimes I wonder how much Alex actually likes Pete.’
‘Good question,’ he says.
‘I don’t think she’s madly in love with him or anything.’
‘Wise girl.’
‘And yet,’ I say slowly, picturing them together, ‘she lets him tell her what to do, all the time.’
‘Well, she would — he’s twice her age.’
‘That’s just what Celia said. She said someone should take her home.’
‘And she would say that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Celia is Pete’s ex.’
‘What? You’re joking!’
‘Nope.’
He finds the album, slips it from its cover and onto the turntable in one dextrous move, then lies down beside me with his hands behind his head.
‘Celia went out with Pete for two years. It all finished badly a few months ago but she has nowhere else to go and refuses to leave. There’s nothing Pete can do. It’s not like he’s a landlord. When you invite people into a squat you take the rough with the smooth.’
‘And she’s been so ill,’ I say. ‘Poor Celia, no wonder she hardly leaves her room.’
Fitz raises himself on one elbow and squints down at me.
‘Beth, you…why do you think she’s been ill? Why’s she so thin?’
I gaze up at him and see he’s serious.
‘I thought women only died of a broken heart in Victorian novels.’
‘Bugger broken hearts. Celia’s anorexic. At least, that’s what I think.’
‘Anna-what?’
‘Anorexic. You know?’
I shake my head. I have no idea what he’s talking about, have never heard the word. The reason Fitz has is because he knows someone who knows someone who is.
‘It’s to do with eating,’ he explains. ‘When people stop eating. Usually girls, young women.’
He tells me what little he knows, explaining that Celia’s whole life revolves around not eating and pretending that she has.
‘And you think that’s because of Pete? That he did that to her?’
He shrugs. ‘Not exactly — I’m sure there are other things going on. But it didn’t help. It doesn’t help having Alex here either.’
‘Does Alex know? I mean, that Celia’s his ex?’
‘Now that’s a very good question.’ He lies back down, closes his eyes and gently strokes my stomach. ‘Maybe you can f
ind out — ask a few questions about Celia, see what Alex’s reaction is.’
‘I hope she doesn’t know. Or maybe I hope she does. It might put her off him.’
‘If she does, it hasn’t so far.’
Which brings me back to where I’d started.
‘I still say Alex doesn’t like Pete as much as you’d think she would.’
‘And how much is that? Maybe she’s using him in the way that you think he’s using her.’
I open my mouth to speak but Fitz leans over and puts his lips on mine.
‘Forget about Alex,’ he mutters.
*
The summer of nineteen seventy-seven has been cool, rain-soaked, up to now, but that week is an exception. It’s as though the sun is blessing us with rays of warmth; it blazes down each day from a perfectly blue sky. We drag blankets and cushions out into the garden and lie in the long grass, soaking up the sun, me going brown and poor Fitz going pink where he doesn’t watch out for his fair skin. He decides the garden needs some work doing on it so I help him with weeding and chopping things back, with one rusty trowel, one wobbly spade and a pair of shears between us. I follow his directions — he seems to know what he’s doing — and everything does look tidier afterwards. I find I like it: the warm, earthy scent as I turn over the soil; the satisfaction to be got from tugging up long strands of bindweed; the way the baby lettuce seem to sigh and breathe again as they are released from a tangle of leggy green weeds.
‘Where did you learn all this?’ I ask. ‘I thought you lived in a flat all your life.’
‘I used to help my uncle, Dan’s dad. He gave me all these old tools and every now and then he bungs a few seedlings my way.’ Fitz straightens up from where he’s hacking back some ivy, smearing dirt onto his face as he wipes sweat from his eyes. ‘That and my school had a little gardening club, which I liked going to because it got me out of cookery.’
‘So how come you got a job as a chef?’
‘I washed pots for six months and decided anything would be better than that, so I found a job where they’d train me up. From kitchen slave to commis chef.’
I’m learning that Fitz is a curious mixture of chatter and silence with not much in between. He started on the garden with quiet concentration, only speaking to tell me what to do, but now he’s begun to talk all sorts of stories come out about hotel kitchens, and about his big family with lots of cousins. We work on like this for a couple of hours, until my back is aching and there are two shiny blisters on the palm of my right hand, and I refuse to do any more. I peel off my T-shirt, lie down and listen to the sound of his shears snipping away, revelling in the amazing fact that we’ve found each other and thinking idly how nice it would be to have sex out here, on the grass, with the sun pouring down. Only Dan would be sure to arrive right in the middle, I think, and just as I do we both hear the sound of tyres skidding in the gravel of the alleyway.
‘That is really weird,’ I say, giggling.
‘What is?’
‘I’ll tell you later.’ I pull my T-shirt back on and sit up as Dan comes through the gate. He collapses onto the grass, panting, and I go inside to get us all a drink of water.
I’m in complete denial about the fact that I’m going home in two days’ time.
That evening, after Dan’s gone, Fitz and I go round to Victoria Wine and buy some beers. Then we go to the Spar and get burgers and buns and Kraft cheese slices, tomatoes and cucumber. We plan to make a salad with two of the bigger lettuces in the garden. It’s a big moment for Fitz; the first of his crop. He rolls a couple of joints for later, we crack open a can each, and wait for Pete and Alex to come back. I’m excited; suddenly it’s like having my own family. For the first time I think: I could stay here, I could live like this. I see a different kind of future roll out in front of me, and the idea is dizzying, like the bubbles in my head after my first glass of champagne.
By half-past nine, when they’re not back, I’m fidgety. It isn’t like them; daytime is for dealing, night time is for smoking, and Pete always prefers to be home. Fitz is cool. He cooks our burgers, which I eat half-heartedly, and keeps telling me not to fret. They’re probably in a pub somewhere, he says, though we both know that Pete doesn’t like pubs. I’m convinced they’ve been arrested. At eleven we hear the back gate bang and both make for the kitchen, like anxious parents waiting up for their too-late offspring. Alex comes through the door first, her face pinched and drained of colour. Pete slopes in after, with a cut lip and a bruised, puffy cheek.
‘Trouble?’ Fitz asks, a little unnecessarily.
Pete has gone to the sink, splashes cold water onto his face. ‘Some little cunt. Trying to be fucking clever.’
The way Pete swears, in his posh vowels, somehow always makes it sound more vicious.
‘Who came off worst?’
He shrugs. ‘There were two of them.’
As he moves to sit down at the battered kitchen table I notice he’s limping and that it hurts to bend his knee; he keeps his leg stuck out to the side. Alex takes the chair next to him, Fitz and I sit opposite.
‘So, what happened?’ Fitz asks.
‘This arsehole decided I was short-changing him, said I’d brought less than I’d agreed for the price. He wanted to screw another hundred grams out of me and wouldn’t let us out.’
‘Where were you?’
Pete shrugs. ‘Does it matter? Some shitty little flat in Ealing.’
Fitz looks him over, at his face, and the grazes on his knuckles. ‘Looks like you didn’t give it him.’
Pete tries to smile, winces, then dabs at his lip, which is swelling up to match his cheek. ‘You could say there was a minor altercation. Then this big gorilla storms in from another room and pins me down. I was done over, as they say..Had no choice but to agree to their terms. Bang goes today’s profit.’ He suddenly spots empty beer cans by the sink and nods towards them. ‘Any more of that?’
I go over to the wobbly fridge and fetch us all a can. Pete rips the tab off his and flicks it across the table, then takes a large swallow, grimacing again as he has to open his mouth wider than it wants to go. I look across at Alex; she’s picking at the sticky price tag. I’ve never seen her this quiet.
‘What were their terms?’ I ask.
Pete begins to speak but Alex cuts across him. ‘They made me stay there while Pete went to score some more. That was the last drop of the day so we didn’t have any left.’
I sit in stunned disbelief as Alex takes a swig of beer. Even Fitz is shocked.
‘You left her there,’ he says, ‘in a flat with two thugs?’
‘I didn’t have much choice, did I?’
‘And they weren’t exactly thugs,’ Alex says dismissively, as though every day she gets taken hostage in a drugs deal. ‘I mean, they didn’t do anything to me. I just sat and watched their telly.’
Her face has recovered some of its colour but I’m not fooled by her nonchalance; I’ve seen that ‘so what?’ look on her face at school, when she’s squaring up to a teacher and knows there’ll be hell to pay later.
Fitz is frowning, puzzled. ‘Why not just give you what they thought it was worth and kick you out?’
‘Because…’ Pete speaks very slowly, as if to a child ‘…they had deals to make of their own. They’d made promises — they couldn’t turn up without the goods.’
I bang my can down so hard that beer slops out. ‘I can’t believe you left Alex there, alone!’ Fitz catches hold of my arm but I shake him off. ‘How dare you do that?’
Pete’s eyes widen with surprise. ‘There’s no need to get upset, Beth—’
‘There’s every sodding need! I can’t believe what you did!’
‘Nothing happened to her, did it?’ He shrugs. ‘Nothing was going to happen.’
‘How could you know that?’
‘Because I am not a hysterical teenager and I know what I’m doing.’
‘Like putting Alex in danger?’
I shoot a glanc
e at Alex but she’s ignoring me. Pete puts one hand on her knee.
‘You’re so melodramatic, Beth,’ he says softly. ‘Alex was never “in danger”, she was just a guarantee that I’d come back.’
‘What’s the difference? And what if—?’
‘He wasn’t going to leave me there, Beth.’
There’s a slight tremble in Alex’s voice. I sit back, breathing hard, rigid in my chair.
‘As for what’s good for Alex,’ Pete says, raising his voice, ‘I think you’re forgetting how crap her life was before this.’
‘Shut up!’ Alex screams. ‘Shut the fuck up, both of you!’ She leaps up from the table, knocking her chair backwards on the ground. I think she will run out of the room but suddenly she crumples before our eyes, both hands over her face, tears leaking out from under them. I’m shocked, unprepared for how quickly she’s gone from careless to crisis, but Pete remains totally calm. He looks at me for a long moment, then stands and folds her in his arms, stroking her hair and her back as he murmurs quiet, soothing words, telling her everything is going to be all right. Fitz and I watch open-mouthed. It’s unmistakable how Alex responds, subsiding into him, burrowing her head into his shoulder as though she can hide from the world there; all my assumptions about their relationship are suddenly thrown into the air.
When finally they move apart they go straight upstairs without another word. I’m stunned, left staring at the tipped-up chair. ‘She’ll hate me now.’
Fitz shrugs. ‘You said what she wouldn’t dare.’
‘I was right, wasn’t I?’
‘Sure,’ he agrees. ‘But it’s complicated. Pete can be a bastard but maybe here is where Alex needs to be right now, maybe for her he serves a purpose. Things are not always as simple as they seem.’
I love that about Fitz, the way he takes a tangle of things and seems to straighten them out. Not that he has any answers, just that you can see them more clearly. I guess it was what I loved about Alex, too. Now, she’s the tangle.
Looking for Alex Page 9
