by Lucy English
‘Isn’t it? Oh, give me passion. A beautiful man staring in your eyes. Kissing you all over. I love you. I love you!’ The workmen were already eyeing her up. ‘When did you last have that?’
Leah didn’t answer.
‘I have not asked about you. You say so little about yourself. I sense … grief.’
‘Yes,’ said Leah. ‘I can tell you now.’ She told all of it, right to the last bit, which was Kerry.
Sarah listened. ‘What an extraordinary man he is to draw you in, then push you away. He needs so much control. It feels he has been … damaged.’
‘He was,’ said Leah in a whisper. ‘I knew it, but what can you do about somebody’s pain?’
Sarah’s face was serene. ‘You cannot fix other people.’
‘I wanted to connect.’
Sarah squeezed her hand. She felt soft like a ripe plum. ‘You are compassionate,’ she said, ‘but what about your anger?’
‘I think I can handle it,’ said Leah.
Sarah opened her ephemeris: ‘Pluto is making a stress aspect to your sun.’
‘You know I don’t understand this,’ said Leah.
Sarah’s finger remained on the lists of symbols. ‘Pluto is the planet of transformation. The lord of the Underworld. Your deepest self will be challenged.’
‘By dark forces?’ She was being flippant.
But Sarah was serious: ‘The force that splits the seed. Destroys the seed case. Keep the image of the seed. It may be helpful.’
People paid Sarah ₤20 to hear this. ‘Thank you,’ said Leah.
‘You are compassionate,’ said Sarah, ‘but compassion is not wobbly, it’s tough.’
‘What on earth is wobbly compassion?’ Leah had to laugh.
Sarah frizzed out her hair. ‘Oh you know, getting romantic and unfocused. I do it all the time. ‘I’ve got a highly focal Neptune. It’s such a burden.’
‘I love you,’ said Leah, feeling completely wobbly.
‘And I love you too,’ said Sarah, forgetting all her advice.
It was the third weekend without Bailey. The children had gone. Leah was in bed. Clive was frying liver, bacon and onions. The smell of it filled the house.
Sarah and Rachel are my friends but they are busy, wrapped up with children, partners, houses. The second hand goes round on my clock. Clive is cooking but I don’t want to eat. Debbie will be here soon. I don’t want to see her. My friends care about me but they are not here.
In the evening Rachel phoned. ‘We’re off to the Woolpack, how about it?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She was still not dressed. A few hours and it would be bedtime anyway.
‘Don’t let him get to you,’ said Rachel.
‘It’s not that.’ I want to be by myself, because inside I am going wild.
Leah was at the open-air café in the docks. It was raining. She sat with her hands around a mug of hot chocolate. Rain splashed into it the same colour as the harbour water. Houseboats rocked on their moorings. A low white mist hung over the city.
The city is asleep under a sheet. Yesterday I watched a seagull eat a bun. He tore it with his beak. The ferry went up and down seven times. Three times it was empty. I counted. A tramp on a bicycle went round and round the car park. His long coat flapped like wings. He was laughing. I couldn’t see the joke. I saw a man eat a pasty. My drink is cold.
Cabot tower is like a lighthouse but where are the dangerous rocks? Over there is a three-masted schooner. When will it sail away? At night on a boat you are rocked to sleep. Does the harbour ever freeze over? I would like to walk on the ice. I told Barbara I was sick. Tomorrow I will stay in bed.
Jo needs new socks. My socks are wet. The rain drips off my nose. Why was that man laughing? My hands are cold.
Here comes the ferry cutting through the water. Yellow and blue on the grey water. There are two people on it.
Inside I am going wild. I want to cut through like the ferry. Christmas is four weeks away and I don’t care. It’s Ange’s birthday and I won’t go. I won’t go to the Woolpack or the Red Café. I’m getting angry.
Rachel phoned me, she said, ‘You haven’t been out, what are you plotting?’
I said, ‘A meltdown.’
‘Remember to stand back,’ she said. But I want to be part of it. I want to burn. ‘Don’t forget your children,’ she said. But my children are far away.
I’m getting angry and I’m getting bold. Today I’m sitting in the rain. I’m unlocking myself. I like this feeling. I’m turning like seagulls. I’m watching them now. They’re screaming as they turn in the air. I’m thinking this: I could tell Kerry about your dad. I like these thoughts. I could go into the Red Cafe and stand on a chair.
But a meltdown is more private. It burns from inside and burns through. It’s white heat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
An icy wind scudded down the Wells Road. There was a line of cars and buses bumper to bumper crawling towards the centre of town. Leah pushed through the Christmas shoppers. She was ill. She was wearing the long black coat she used to wear in Devon, but she wasn’t cold. She was burning and melting. Her clothes stuck to her. Her breath in the air was like steam. She moved past people as if they were ghosts.
I know where I’m going, and I don’t know. I’m walking and walking and I need to sleep. I want to see you and I don’t want to see you.
She had conjured him up and there he was. A head higher than most people and in bright orange. A purple sportsbag and new white trainers. He saw her. They met outside the butcher’s shop.
‘Well, I ain’t seen you for weeks.’ It was said with disgust and he leaned away from her.
‘I’m ill,’ said Leah. She must have looked it because he stared harder.
‘You never went to Ange’s party.’
‘I never did.’ He looked well, almost smug. Sides of beef were being carried from a lorry into the shop. She could smell the fresh dead meat. She swayed as though she might faint. Bailey did nothing.
‘I’ll be off then.’ She didn’t watch him, but stood there.
I felt it like a force and now it’s clear. Fresh dead meat. Flesh in your house. Put the flesh in your house. Here it is. Here it is.
She was walking now, round past the park and into Steep Street. She rang the bell but Kerry wasn’t there, of course she wasn’t, she worked in the café on Saturdays, and Leah knew where the back key was.
It was a short scramble up an overgrown alley and a skip over the wall. Nobody saw. The key was under a stone. She put it in the lock.
You cannot keep me out. You cannot shut me out. I am wild now and burning.
She was standing in his kitchen and her face was hot. It was a delicious fire. Inside it was gloomy although it was past midday. The house smelt different. Sweet and sticky like the Body Shop. Hair mousse, deodorant, bath oil, soap. Mingled in a female brew. She opened the kitchen cupboards. She was prying now. There was half a bottle of whisky between the peanut butter and the jam.
In the front room she stretched out on the sofa hugging the bottle and taking great gulps. There was a lace mat on the coffee table. The Cézanne had gone and in its place was a poster of a bluebell wood. She rested her head on an embroidered cushion.
Every object says woman. You two sweet lovebirds. I fucked him right here, and on that chair, and on the floor. I bet he never told you that.
The room was beginning to sway and stretch and she was stretching too, becoming huge and filling the whole room, the whole house.
There is no place for your sticky sweet stuff here. Here is flesh. Here is body. You didn’t think I could be so forceful.
She took off her coat and threw it in the corner. Then the rest of her clothes, slowly. One boot went behind the telly, the other hit the bluebell wood. In her underwear, she danced round the room, jumping on the armchair. She laughed until her eyes streamed and the sweat stuck her hair to her back. Her knickers landed on the lampshade.
Upstairs still holding the wh
isky she kicked open the bedroom door. In the fading light the room seemed underwater. She drew the curtains to make it darker, more private.
What are these things here I don’t recognise? Hairbrushes, skirts, a flowery bedspread. Where are the mobiles? Your dream pictures? This is not your room any longer, but a ‘we are’ room. Here we are. Here we live. Little sweet us. Hide yourself away in us. But you cannot hide it. I know you cannot hide it. I can feel you pushing up under everything. This sweet stuff is just a dusting.
Watch it fly. And she spun round the room with her arms out, but slowly, like moving through water, like somebody sinking to the mud in a river. She could see herself in the full-length mirror propped up against the wall, naked and spinning. Behind her, another mirror. A thousand spinning Leahs in Bailey’s altered bedroom.
I didn’t know there was so much of me. I am so many people, everywhere, all together. Bailey, where are you? Your room is full of my flesh. I want you to see it. I am everywhere. I want you to know it.
She stopped. The floorboards tilted and the ceiling flew to the window. The bed jumped up and hit her. The whisky splashed across her face and the bottle melted on to the floor. Bailey’s bed smelt like Bailey. No perfume was stronger than that and she breathed it in, each breath like a sigh, like a deep sob, but she wasn’t crying. She rolled in his bed and rolled, hugging herself. Her skin felt soft.
Your bed was the beginning and this ending is now beginning. I’m massive in your room and you cannot shrink me now. You cannot squash me now.
Bailey came back and it was dark. Leah woke and heard him. He threw his sportsbag in the hall. He didn’t go to the front room but straight upstairs to the shower. She heard the water whine and gurgle down the plug hole. She was floating and protected. The shower was turned off. He walked up the corridor and put on the light.
‘What?’ he said, as she sat up smiling and blinking. ‘What? What?’ He stood there, unbelieving, wet and in just a towel. His foot hit the whisky bottle. ‘What the fuck? What are you doing?’
‘I walk through walls,’ she said.
He tore up to her and yanked her out of bed with one move. He could hardly speak. ‘Get the fuck out of my house.’ He shook her and she began to laugh, floppy in his arms.
‘Christ, you stink! You drunk all that? Where are your clothes?’
‘Everywhere.’
He looked around but couldn’t see any. ‘Get dressed you stupid cow. Then get out.’
She put her hands on him to steady herself and she felt him stiffen.
‘Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking try …’ but she kept her hands there. Bailey stayed still like a cornered thing.
‘You are afraid of me: now that is odd.’ She slipped her hands down and tugged his towel. It fell on the floor and they were both naked staring at each other. He wiped back his hair and for a moment closed his eyes. When he opened them they were like glass.
‘OK, what do you want?’
‘I want you to know,’ said Leah, trying to stand without swaying, ‘that you are bad, that you are bad, that you treat me like filth, that you treat me no better than your dad did you, that you are the same, Bailey.’ She was shouting now but not out of control: ‘You sweet-talk and lie to get it, then you hate it, then you push away, get back in there in the dirt. Your dad did that, didn’t he, pushed you back like you push me.’
‘Get out!’ he screamed. He grabbed her and pulled her out of his room. At the top of the stairs they jostled each other. She shouted, ‘You cannot keep me down, you cannot eradicate me.’ Two naked bodies slipping against each other. His arms around her tugging, but she held on to the banisters. He was holding her from behind.
‘Don’t you think I know about me,’ he said in her ear and his body pushed against hers.
The front door slammed and Kerry screamed, ‘Oh my God, what is happening!’
Bailey let go and Leah walked down the stairs. ‘What is happening?’ Kerry was in the hall, her curls bouncing like Medusa’s.
‘What do you think?’ said Leah on the bottom step.
‘It’s not that!’ shouted Bailey sliding down, still wet from his shower and still with a hard-on.
‘What is she doing here? Her clothes are in the front room –’ She pointed to the knickers on the lampshade. Leah got dressed as Kerry screamed and screamed and ran at Bailey. ‘I thought you hated her, you told me you hated her.’ He was on the stairs with his head in his hands.
‘Get out of my house,’ Kerry screamed at Leah.
‘I’m going,’ said Leah.
As she ran up the road, she could still hear Kerry screaming.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
That was meltdown. I came down the stairs. I saw Kerry’s face and she hated you. Pretty bluebells blasted away and I’ve left you in ashes. Eat ashes. And the white specks floating down like snow can cover you.
The sky outside my window is slate and feels too heavy even to rain. It won’t get light. There is no light coming through. I’m burning in Clive’s house. I’ve forgotten the days. He brings me tea and soup. He sits on my bed and says, ‘Are you all right?’ He has a clean shirt, red and blue checks. Debbie bought it. Clean Clive. His beard is fuzzy like a hedgehog. ‘Does it ever tickle you?’ I say, but he says, ‘Do you want me, basically, to call a doctor?’ I was talking in my sleep. I don’t remember. Sleep is when you stop.
My clock says two, but it can’t be because it was just eleven.
My clock says twenty-past six but it can’t be because it was just two and it’s dark. I’m so hot.
You said, don’t you think I know about me, and pushed. Then Kerry screamed and it all went so fast. You said it in my ear. Don’t you think I know about me. You know you are bad. I know you are bad. I know you know. I wish it wasn’t dark.
Is that somebody standing in my room? They are tall and have huge wings all black and are getting taller, burning eyes in the wall and roaring. I’m screaming and I can’t scream. The house shakes. It’s the last train to Devon across my wall.
I used to live in Devon.
In a cottage when Ben was a baby. It was stone and had four windows and a little porch. The front garden was sweet. I planted pink geraniums among the rocks. The wall was all rock plants. Behind the house the garden went up and up, it had gone wild. In the summer, pink campions and wild strawberries. At the top was a field leading to the moor. The sheep would come and nibble my fingers. I could see over the roof of the house and when it wasn’t misty, all the way to Plymouth and the sea. Ben was little. We used to go and see the horses at the farm. He had a red pushchair, an old-fashioned one like a cloth bucket. It rattled. Jo had to stop and see everything, the nettles, the postbox, eat a wild strawberry. We went through the ford. He liked that. He had long white-blond hair. The farmer thought he was a girl and called him ‘little dolly’. The horses were moorland ponies. We stroked their noses and gave them grass. Ben was scared and wouldn’t touch them. I said, blow in their noses, they like that.
The trees were in blossom. The hawthorn smelt so musty and sweet. I picked bunches to take home. So sweet smelling, but strange like something rotting, something dead.
We were coming back across the ford and Al came running down.
‘Your dad is dead, he dropped dead in the car park at school, this morning, your mum phoned.’
I said, ‘No, he can’t be,’ and I ran through the ford and up the hill to the farm.
Al is shouting. I’m crying. He can’t be dead. Daddy Claremont can’t be dead …
I’m crying. It’s dark and I’m crying. Debbie comes in with a drink. She says, ‘Drink this, it’s an aspirin,’ and Clive is there too stroking his beard: ‘Ho hum, very serious, tears at night, very serious.’ Debbie sits on my bed. I feel stupid. ‘I’m OK. I am. I really am.’ I drink. It’s salty and fizzy and my mouth feels like wet rubber and my throat doesn’t work. But I drink it. ‘I’ll sleep now.’ I lie down. My bed is crumpled.
I was in your bed under the sheet
s thinking meltdown. I pulled down your towel. I love you naked. I love to touch your flesh and my flesh was everywhere, you couldn’t ignore it. I was all over your house. You held me on the stairs, and this was meltdown, you pushing me in a slap of flesh, in a hiss in my ear and Kerry screaming.
Has this happened or did I make it up?
It’s dark and I don’t want it to be.
It was near the end of the week and it was Leah’s first day out of bed. She sat on the chair in the breakfast room wrapped up in a shawl. Clive was at work. She watched the geraniums wobble as the trains went by. She felt light. Her bones were birds’ bones, white and hollow, and her skin was paper. Her head was a baby’s rattle that had split and the beads rolled out.
Next week is Christmas. My mother phoned and said, ‘Are you coming?’ and Al phoned and said, ‘I’m having the boys, do you want to come here or what?’ and Rachel phoned, she said, ‘What have you done? Leah, what have you done?’ I keep saying, I don’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t know.
She lifted her hand and looked at it. It looked pale and unfamiliar, and then her foot. That too, was thin and bony in an old fluffy pink slipper. Around her Clive’s pale green walls and the dirty floor. Her rug now with paw marks and dog hairs. The unmatching chairs at the table piled up with files and magazines. Her geraniums by the window were going brown straining to find some light. A broken gutter dripped outside. Tatty sneezed in the front room. The phone rang. She didn’t answer it. It kept ringing. She answered it. It was Bailey.
‘I need to see you.’ He sounded urgent and forceful.
‘I don’t know,’ said Leah. ‘I’m ill. I don’t know.’
‘It’s mega fucking important. If you don’t come here, I’ll come to you.’
‘Don’t do that!’ She leaned against the wall. ‘An hour and a half. Is that OK?’
‘It’ll do,’ said Bailey.
She went in a taxi. It was an absurd luxury but she couldn’t have walked it. Bailey was going to shout at her. She knew that. Him and Kerry were having a bad time, so Rachel had said. Kerry had gone to Bill and Carol’s and she wasn’t coming back until Bailey could explain. Perhaps Kerry was going to shout at her as well.
