Four New Words for Love

by Michael Cannon

  He finds the taxi rank and stands, self-conscious in his difference and the uncertainty of his mission. These people all have destinations. How are there enough to go around? The dog attracts pats and friendly remarks, only half of which he understands. The queue is raucous and good-natured and moves quickly. He is momentarily caught up in the general contagion. His taxi arrives, the next ticking black cab, and the young man behind needlessly slaps him on the shoulder.

  ‘You’re up, pal.’

  He climbs in and fumbles the utility bill through the gap in the glass, pointing out the address.

  ‘I’ll get you there but I’m no payin’ the electric.’

  How very droll. He had heard that Glaswegians, like Liverpudlians, are always anxious to prove the comical credentials of their city, or as he recalls Gina saying at an item on the news, ‘Everyone’s a fucking comedian.’

  ‘Up for Hogmanay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Visiting kids?’

  The intercom magnifies the driver’s voice and his hesitation.

  ‘Daughter.’ The explanation is too long and might show him in a sinister light.

  ‘You’ll get a good view of the fireworks from that floor.’ Nodding towards the flattened bill on the passenger seat.

  ‘Good. What floor?’ He hadn’t looked. Is there a loft? He had no idea how tiring uncertainty could be, and a sedentary journey has drained all his reserves.

  They cross the river. He recognises the reflected trees. The high-rises loom like monoliths. They stop at the approach that forks to separate blocks. Water is welling up from a rising main like gushing ink in the pooled glare of streetlight. They can’t pass. It’s navigable on foot, threading through a desolate rockery.

  ‘Sorry pal. Can’t drive up. It’ll come over the sills. I’ll carry your bag to the door if it helps.’

  Is he an ambassador of their hospitality as well? He can’t recall a similar offer in London. What does he mean by door? The door to the block or the door of the final demand? What if she’s there and his story is exploded in a doorstep denouement? He thinks he can withstand the driver’s anger better than his disappointment, but then he’s never been punched.

  ‘I’ll manage.’ He peels off a large tip. The driver promises to toast his health at the bells. What he took for pockets of snow in the rockery turn out to be compressed crisp packets, sandwiched between forlorn shrubs, which crepitate as he picks his way. The mass of the block frowns at his approach. He frowns back trying to find a number or name. The fluorescent hallway is vacant. He crosses the stretch of tarmac to the adjacent block to find it equally anonymous. The hallway reveals three teenagers, who stare at him alarmingly. There’s something sinister in their indolence. The sitting one, regarded by the other two, stands. The dog barks. The boy decides otherwise and sits back on the stairs. Christopher backs away.

  There is a cluster of shops on the other side of the burst water main. Again he winds his way through the forlorn shrubs. On closer inspection the cluster looks like a concrete bunker. There is a graffitied concourse. Several embattled shops are shuttered closed. Only two are lit. He enters the first. An Asian shopkeeper with a turban is surrounded by an arsenal of fireworks. Aside from this the place seems to sell the kind of miscellany that the desperate need in the early hours.

  ‘Nae dugs.’

  The accent is so thick he swivels round looking for its owner. A turbaned Glaswegian does not occur to him. He swivels back to see the shopkeeper pointing to the appropriate sign. It is one of a number, warning against the purchase of underage cigarettes and alcohol and fireworks, that somehow Christopher imagines he is not as rigorous in prosecuting.

  ‘Do you know what tower block this is?’ He hands the bill across.

  ‘Sorry, pal.’ The purchase of a conciliatory samosa for the dog doesn’t change things. ‘I’m lookin’ after this place for my cousin. Try next door – they’re local.’

  He trudges back into the concourse with the dog following. Both have been here five minutes and both are fed up. He is astonished at the next interior. Customers are confined within a perspex rectangle. The staff and merchandise are on the other side. Transactions seem to be conducted through some kind of hatch, like a silent order avoiding contamination with the everyday. Once again he unfolds the now grubby bill and passes it through for inspection. It is taken up by a boy in his twenties who looks as if he’s seen everything. As he inspects the bill, Christopher inspects him. An eruption of retreating acne; hair combed in sebaceous furrows like a grooved cap. The unschooled eyebrows shoot back an inch before he regains his composure.

  ‘Sorry, pal. Can’t help.’

  Why is everyone professing to be his pal when they are so manifestly uncooperative? If he can’t help why has he passed the bill to the nondescript woman at his side whom Christopher has just noticed? Why is her transparent reaction more extreme than the boy’s? Will she be of as little help as him and the turbaned man next door?

  ‘Will you mind the shop?’ Her voice is as amplified by the intercom as the taxi driver’s. Despite the rising intonation Christopher can tell it’s not a question. The man gestures, disgruntled, towards the responsibility of the non-existent customers. She ignores him and pulls on an earthy cardigan. There is a procedure of unlocking and locking to allow her into the perspex arena.

  ‘Come on.’

  He follows her, and the dog follows him, to the left of the tower blocks. There is an unsubmerged path after all, so they don’t have to negotiate the litter. The boys in the lobby look almost affable at the familiar face, and nod in recognition to Christopher. The lift is jarring and smells faintly of bleach and urine.

  ‘This is thirteen E.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘The bill says fourteen E.’

  ‘That’s upstairs.’ He refrains from saying he had worked out as much. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’

  His heart compresses but she is not there. No one is there. It looks like the aftermath of a gypsy encampment.

  ‘Do you live here?’

  ‘I live upstairs.’

  She looks around at the carnage trying unsuccessfully to find something, finally delves into her bag and produces an old envelope.

  ‘Have you got a pen?’

  He gives her his treasured Cross. She flicks the unfamiliar nib, spotting the paper, and then writes, very laboriously. He winces at the friction. She hands back the pen and looks around for somewhere conspicuous to leave the note, finally wedging it beneath the front door number plate on the way out. They take the stairs. She has to wait for him. She has a key on a personalised fob and ushers them in. The place is scrupulous, almost obsessively tidy. She takes his coat and hangs it next to hers in the hall, arranging the four sleeves to hang in parallel. In the living room she needlessly realigns some magazines. He notices a certain custodial air to her gestures.

  ‘Is Gina here?’ The mention of the name freezes her in the act of rearranging some scatter cushions on a battered sofa. She exhales and straightens.

  ‘No. No, Gina’s not here. I was hoping you could tell me where Gina is.’

  ‘But it’s her bill. It’s her bill with this address.’ He sounds like a querulous schoolboy challenging an unfair mark.

  ‘And it’s over a year old.’

  He blinks, registering this, corroborates it from the bill and feels suddenly exhausted. He sits, frowning morosely at the carpet. The awkward placing of the furniture doesn’t successfully cover the threadbare patches.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.’ He has remembered his manners.

  ‘You’ve an overnight bag and you don’t look as if you’ve the energy to go anywhere.’

  ‘Tea would be nice. Do you live here?’

  ‘Yes. I’m looking after it for her.’

  She goes through to the kitchen and he finds himself imprisoned in the disembowelled sofa whose structure was illusory. There
is little support beneath his bottom and the arms have folded in like a carnivorous plant, trapping insects. He extracts himself with a lot of grunting effort and stands. He walks to the hall. The kitchen door is open. She smiles shyly at him across the warming pot and turns to retrieve the caddy. He considers the available doors in the short hall and pushes the first open: bathroom. The next: bedroom, with the same frugal scrupulous appearance of the living room, a bed with hospital corners and a row of utilitarian shoes in a rack beneath the window. This is an intrusion. He came here to find her, or something, at the expense of propriety if need be. The last room. He pushes the door open and stands on the threshold for a minute. The air inside is stale, the room dark with drawn curtains. He reaches inside the door and snaps on the light, standing stock still, taking in the implications of what he sees before venturing in further.

  It is a child’s room. In the corner stands a cot with an overhanging mobile, pantomime animals in primary colours swaying slightly in the unaccustomed gust from the opened door. The walls are lavender, the ceiling yellow, the cornice a bright pastiche of animals and toys, arrested in frozen procession. At his hip, beside the door, is a small coat rail with a confusion of children’s coats and jackets. On the nearest peg, in the form of a duck’s head, a small scarf is draped. Hanging below is a woollen hat, suspended by ties looped in a bow over the beak. Inside the hat are tiny mittens. A collapsed pram, so different from the blunt upholstered barrows of his infancy, crouches beneath. A small bureau with a shin-high chair is littered with toys, which also sprout from an open chest. There is a matching lilac chest of drawers. A series of shelves have been fixed to the wall, adjacent to the cot, and between book ends of opposing elephants, large cardboard volumes of bright illustrations lean. The drawn curtains are a collage of happy aeroplanes, balloons and spaceships, cheerfully piloted by waving aviators, threading their way round smiling constellations and a winking moon. In the overhead light he is fixed with the glassy stare of half a dozen dolls and bears. He takes three strides into the centre of the room, the spring of the pile beneath his feet distinct from the threadbare resistance of the rest of the flat. All her money has gone into this room. There is something not quite right about the colour. It is lacking in intensity. He takes out a cardboard volume and realises why: there is a mantle of dust here thicker than that which made his house monochrome till she removed it. The girl from the shop announces her presence with a cough. She leans in and hands him a steaming mug. He moves forward to accept. He is about to apologise for the intrusion.

  ‘Take your time.’

  She closes the door behind her, confronting him with Gina, young, happy, staring at him a dozen times from the collage fastened to the pinboard on the back of the door. And in all the photographs her head is twinned with the little girl’s, and she wears an expression he has never seen in the flesh.

  He is absently holding the mug at the base and realises it is burning his hand. He looks around for somewhere to lay it down when he hears the front door bang open. There is a commotion in the hall and the bedroom door is flung open again, agitating the mobile. The picture of Gina he was studying is replaced with two young woman in the doorway, also now framed in the proscenium of memory. The second one has identified herself by her own illumination. She is clutching the crushed envelope. Two large rivulets of mascara stripe her face. The spectacular breasts are heaving spasmodically as she looks desperately askance at him. The kind girl who delivered the tea has now been identified as the satellite of the photos. Sad to say, he has only succeeded in identifying her as an ancillary to the other, who is now brandishing the envelope towards him. Neither has entered the room. In reply to the wordless exchange he retrieves the photos from his wallet and hands them across. They examine them and put their arms around one another. The plain girl almost disappears.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to sit down, but please, not in that settee.’

  PART 3

  Personally I didn’t see what all the fuss was about and I went upstairs to tell her. Ruth’s standing behind her with one hand on her shoulder. And that kind of annoyed me. ‘So what,’ I said, ‘he was a man and it didn’t work out. If you’d wanted him that much you could always have tried sex.’

  ‘She did try sex.’

  The fact that Ruth’s doing the talking isn’t a good sign. Gina normally doesn’t let anyone talk for her.

  ‘So once he got what he wanted he just pissed off. Typical fucking man.’ And something else struck me. ‘You haven’t risked another...’ and I nod towards the nursery. At least this makes her look up.

  ‘Look at this place,’ she says, moving a bit of carpet with her foot.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Look at it. What are the chances of it containing happiness?’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about? Is this some kind of University Challenge philosophy question? I’m worried about you being knocked up and you’re worried about furniture.’

  ‘We didn’t have sex.’

  ‘Gay.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Name like Simon. Works in a classical music shop. Dead giveaway really. How many women go into a classical music shop? And now he turns down sex.’

  She just sighed and got up and went into her room. If you can’t raise an argument out of her there must be something really wrong. I went through her cupboards looking for biscuits. It’s astonishing the amount of food and stuff you have to have around for a kid. But no biscuits. Millie woke up. Gina went through and fetched her and took her through to her own room. That’s something I hadn’t seen for a while. Usually she tries to settle her where she is. I gave it half an hour and looked in. The curtains are drawn against the sun and everything’s shades of grey. They’re lying together on the bed, face to face, like the last survivors in a lifeboat. Adrift. I thought she was asleep. I go to close the door and she says, ‘I can’t stay there now.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Work.’

  ‘Fuck that. Let him move.’

  ‘He’s the manager.’

  ‘A man or a job. A man and a job. Neither are worth it. Any biscuits?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There’s not much a Gypsy Cream can’t fix. Want me to go out and get some?’

  ‘No.’

  I could see it was quite serious. I went to Davinder’s for the biscuits and ate half of them on the way up while I thought about it. She once told me I wasn’t a whole person. She thinks I won’t remember. She thinks I’ve got the recall of a hamster. Some things stick – if they hurt and they’re true. That was true, although I wouldn’t admit as much to anyone. But she was right. I wasn’t a whole person by her reckoning. And if I look at her now there’s something wrong. For the first time, looking at her poke that bit of carpet with her foot, she looked to me as if she wasn’t a whole person. She stepped up to the plate for me more times than I can say. I’ll do it for her.

  So I waited till the two posh girls leave and I breeze in. ‘We’re closed,’ he says, and then looking up ‘we don’t keep money on the premises overnight.’

  Fuck me. What does he think I am – a one woman ram raid? What did she see in this specimen? And that’s when I saw the flaw in my plan – there wasn’t one. Some kinds of men just can’t be seduced – dead, gays, some clergy, happily married, and the frightened. He looked petrified. I just assumed I’d work on him, maybe a bit of office gymnastics. The outlay already offered half a dozen possibilities. And then a nice little talk. And if the fire alarm permits, a sly fag. I mention Gina and he laughs and we work something out. I go home and tell her and she’s furious and then she’s grateful and then we hug and she burst into tears and admits I am a whole person and we watch Coronation Street and everything’s the same. Only better.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m interested in...’ I wave, ‘Glen Miller.’ It’s a moment of inspiration and the only classical composer I can come up with.

  ‘Are you a friend of
Gina’s?’

  ‘Have I got a badge with ‘poor’ or something stamped on my forehead?’

  ‘Not your forehead.’

  That stopped me for a minute. I liked him better for it.

  ‘Look. She just wants her job back.’

  He looks shocked. ‘I don’t understand. She hasn’t lost her job. I’m expecting her in the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, you turning her down. It’s a bit of a blow for a girl.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘I know, I know.’ But I didn’t know. No one’s ever turned me down. No doubt Gina would argue that I’m not that choosey. And then I hit on my plan. It was the same as all my other plans and the one I’d half an idea of when I came in. If I overcame his nerves and gave him a bit of relief in the back shop and told her, she could write him off as another one of these useless bastards she accuses me of hanging around with. And then she wouldn’t feel sad because she hadn’t lost out much. In my imagination I’m even telling her how he was too anxious and came all over the Jim Reeves CDs, and she’s laughing, and the Custard Creams are tumbling on to the plate like coins.