The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me

by Lucy Robinson

  ‘Shut up and let me listen to the jazz,’ I ordered. The bar shimmered happily around me.

  ‘Shut up yourself.’ He shoved some hair out of his eyes and it fell straight back. ‘I really do need to get a haircut.’ He sighed. ‘My hair is like a natural disaster.’

  I giggled. ‘No! It’s … special, your hair. I like it.’

  ‘But if I sorted it out I could look at you properly.’ He gazed straight at me. ‘You are just … just lovely.’

  After a while he turned back to watch the music and, in a most un-Sally Howlett move, I kissed the side of his neck, which was next to my face, and said, ‘Thank you,’ in his ear. He smiled and put his arm round me, turning his attention back to the music, and it seemed as if we’d been like that for ever, fitting perfectly into each other’s sides in rowdy bars crammed with mad bric-a-brac and peeling posters in Harlem.

  Scene Eleven

  Much later, the crowd thinned a little and the jazz became more reflective. Bill, whose birthday it was, had offered us a table next to a giant vat of goat curry that he’d brought for his guests. ‘Eat that. Talk about love.’ He grinned, shaking Julian’s hand.

  We sat opposite each other and suddenly it felt like a date again. My stomach knotted happily, and when Julian reached over and pulled my hand into his, drumming the rhythm of the band softly into my palm, I felt explosions of zigzagging warmth right across my body.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked me.

  I beamed and nodded. I was truly OK.

  ‘Just to be clear,’ he said softly. ‘I was talking to her. She was all cut up about that photo and she needed a friend.’

  I sighed. I didn’t really want to talk about Fiona while we sat in a secret place somewhere in Sesame Street, but there were some questions I probably still had to ask. ‘I believe you. But, um, I just wanted to know … Were the drugs Fiona’s?’

  Julian looked uncomfortable. ‘I think so.’

  ‘I see. And where did she get them from?’

  ‘I honestly have no idea.’ He looked down at the table, then up at me. ‘Although it won’t have been Raúl, if that’s what you’re thinking. He doesn’t go anywhere near anyone who takes that shit.’

  ‘Then who?’ I drummed my fingers on the table. ‘I need to get whoever it is to stop supplying her.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’ Julian stroked my hand with his thumb. ‘Drug dealers don’t care, Sally. The only person who’s going to stop Fiona is Fiona. And I’m not sure she can.’

  ‘But she did, Julian. She hasn’t taken anything in months. Well, at least three months.’ Julian held my hand as I told him about the transformation in Fiona since she’d met Raúl on the plane in June. I told him about all the times when I’d expected her to get drunk, or starve herself to the point of exhaustion, or cause a scene or treat me like rubbish, and how she hadn’t done any of those things. Well, not much.

  ‘She sorted herself out somehow,’ I said uncertainly. A young guy was playing a trumpet now, a rich, high line of sound drifting out over the bar like delicately unfurling smoke.

  Julian frowned. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked eventually. ‘Because it seems to me that she’s got a pretty regular coke habit. She needs to take it a lot, Sally. Have you not noticed anything?’

  ‘No!’ I snapped defensively. Then: ‘Sorry. But I don’t think … Although actually …’

  Julian waited for me to go on.

  ‘She has been a bit, I don’t know. Odd. Highly strung, although in a slightly different way from normal. Talking a lot of shit.’

  Julian nodded. ‘Has she been worse at getting started in the morning?’

  My heart began to feel heavy. ‘I suppose so. Yes. And … she disappears quite a lot, often when she’s being mental. And comes back OK.’

  ‘And how is she generally? Quite manageable? Turning up for work and stuff?’

  ‘Well, she’s not due back for a little while,’ I stammered. ‘But she’s … Well, as unreliable as ever. Forgets to do the shopping, leaves her clothes at the laundrette, gets into arguments with strangers, keeps needing to borrow money … But that’s Freckle! She’s always been rubbish!’

  Julian smiled sympathetically.

  ‘Oh, God,’ I muttered fearfully. ‘Do you think she’s really …?’

  ‘I don’t know. Possibly.’

  The fear tightened. ‘Oh, God,’ I repeated. ‘And you’re sure this has nothing to do with Raúl? Because she wasn’t doing drugs before. I mean I caught her once, but –’

  ‘Trust me,’ Julian cut across me. ‘This has nothing to do with Raúl. His only involvement in it is that he’s worried. He’s begun to notice it too. He said she’d been getting difficult and paranoid about him over the last few weeks. He was shocked by what a nightmare she was last night, back on the booze.’

  I stared at Julian’s face for further clues. ‘And?’

  He sat back, scratching his head. ‘I’m not sure he’ll stick around if she’s out of control,’ he said gently. ‘He – well, he has his reasons.’

  Shit.

  ‘But they’ve been so happy!’ I pleaded. ‘They’ve been great together! He can’t just stop liking her!’

  Julian leaned sideways to dig something out of his pocket and produced a buzzing phone. ‘Oh!’ I said, momentarily forgetting our conversation. ‘You got a new one!’

  ‘No.’ He frowned at it and then put it back in his pocket. ‘Turns out I’d left it in Raúl’s apartment last night. It never even made it out to the poetry slam.’

  I smiled wanly.

  ‘As I said, I’m a moron who loses and forgets everything. Now, where were we?’

  ‘Raúl. You were implying that he might be about to dump Fi.’

  ‘I don’t know, I’m only guessing, so please try not to worry. The fact is, Raúl’s mad about her. But she’s changed quite quickly and … he has a lot to lose. You’ll have to trust me on that. He’s not a user himself, and he’s not a bad man, but he can’t be around that shit.’

  I felt stirrings of panic. Julian, sensing this, leaned over and tucked my hair behind my ear, which I found calming. ‘Let go, Sally,’ he said. ‘You aren’t responsible for her.’

  ‘I am, though. She’s my cousin, practically my sister.’

  ‘I know. But that still doesn’t make you responsible for her.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand. She –’ I stopped myself, uncertain as to whether to continue.

  One of the bar staff came and cleared away a vast pile of glasses that had built up. ‘Here, let me help you,’ Julian said. He picked up a few and walked them over to the bar, talking to the girl. She thanked him, and he came back.

  ‘You’re so nice,’ I told him. ‘To everyone. You notice everyone who holds a door open for you, everyone who serves you a drink.’

  He smiled, as if surprised, then thought about what I’d said. Watching his eyes my stomach shifted and swayed; a cornfield in a summer breeze. Julian was like the sun.

  Oh, will you get a bloody grip! I told myself.

  I ignored myself. He was like the sun.

  ‘I grew up on a farm,’ he said eventually. ‘There were two guys who worked there when it was really busy and Dad sort of … It was as if he saw them as machines. He wasn’t rude to them but he sure as hell wasn’t interested in their lives.’ He shrugged. ‘It was odd to me. They were as human and real as he was. They had as many difficulties as he did, more, probably, but he never saw it.’ He thought for a bit. ‘I’ve never really gotten over that. You sit in a restaurant and it’s like the staff aren’t meant to be humans. Having a shit day. Having an amazing day. They’re just smiley food-bringing machines. Everybody’s somebody, aren’t they?’

  I nodded. It was a fair point.

  Julian rested his chin on his hands. ‘And don’t be mad at me, but I wonder if maybe you’re so busy being Fiona’s mom that you forget you’re somebody too?’

  He had caught me off guard. ‘Oh! Um, I … Well, I don’t know about that
…’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be inappropriate.’

  ‘You’re not. It’s just … As I said, I don’t think you really understand.’

  He poked the back of my hand gently with his and then traced along one of my veins. ‘I could try?’

  ‘I – No. It’s family stuff. It’s horrible.’

  I felt myself freeze as he watched me expectantly. I couldn’t tell him my family history. He’d run a mile!

  As if listening to my thoughts, Julian cocked his head to one side, and as he did so, his unironed shirt collar stuck up in an adorable mongrel-dog’s-ear sort of way. I looked at his face, which was the same lovely twinkly face I’d been drunk on for a little over twenty-four hours, and thought, He is the nicest man I’ve ever met.

  I wanted to explain this to him.

  So I did. I certainly hadn’t planned to, but I told him everything. About how Aunty Mandy, my mum’s sister, had always been a problem for the family because she drank too much and entertained notions of being an actress, even though my grandparents had always been ferociously conservative and private. About how she’d quite literally run away with the circus when she was thirteen, having fallen in love with one of the acrobats, but had come back a week later when his wife had turned up. Flunking school, she’d got work with a temping company that hired catering staff to work across the Midlands. Not long after her eighteenth birthday she’d got a short gig at the Birmingham Hippodrome, fallen in love with a man in the panto chorus and run off with him. Only this time she came back pregnant. In our small, somewhat nosy community where everyone knew everyone else’s business, the news had spread like wildfire.

  Mum’s father had been a fearsome man. I’d been healthily afraid of him. Apparently he gave Mandy a stiff beating and threw her out of the family home, telling her she could find somewhere else to whore herself out. Mum had to sneak around behind Grandpa’s back to maintain any sort of relationship with her sister. She also gave a generous amount of her wages to Mandy so that Mandy could rent a room in a house on our council estate belonging to some second cousin or something.

  As a young girl I heard Mum bring this up repeatedly with Mandy when they fought. ‘You have no idea what I risk for you,’ she hissed. ‘And what you cost me. Can’t you even try to sort your life out? Stand on your own two feet?’

  It seemed that she could not, and Mum must have known this because she never abandoned her sister. Quiet, reliable Mum loved her noisy, unreliable sister as if she were her own child.

  Mandy had loved little Fiona desperately but had struggled to be a parent. She was erratic and whimsical, often drunk, and now suffering severe depression. Several times she had forgotten to collect Fiona from school and was visited by social services when a five-year-old Fiona told one of the teachers that she always cooked for herself.

  But none of us had expected the police to arrive at our door that day. None of us had expected that they would tell Mum the body in the canal near Wolverhampton was Mandy’s. None of us had expected to find out that little Fiona had been alone in the house for five days, waiting for her mum to come home.

  Mandy left Mum a tear-stained note saying she couldn’t do the mothering thing and if Mum couldn’t find Fiona’s father, the actor, then please could Mum bring up Fiona herself. She instructed Mum to keep sending Fiona to ballet classes, and then ballet school, if money permitted. Fiona was already showing exceptional promise at the local dance school and Mandy liked the idea of her following in her father’s theatrical footsteps.

  She signed off, Please tell her I did love her, so very much. My beautiful Freckle.

  I would never forget Mum’s face the day she told us what had happened. She was lost. Stunned, devastated, disbelieving, yet frozen in all of these emotions; almost wordless.

  Fiona had moved in with us that night and a search for her father had begun. It was very half-hearted: Mum and Dad had no intention of handing over their little niece to some promiscuous stranger, but I suspected Mum had to try for Mandy’s sake. Of course, the media got wind of the search, which caught the nation’s imagination quickly. Soon it was all over the news that the ‘canal orphan’ needed to ‘find her daddy!’

  No daddy came forward, and she stayed with us. Already close, we lived in each other’s pockets from that moment on. But although I got to live with my bestest friend, there was nothing golden about those years.

  Fiona, already naughty and noisy, got worse. After years of Grandpa banging on about Aunty Mandy having brought shame on the family it must have caused Mum real agony to be hauled in to Far Hill Primary (at least once a month) to defend the conduct of her niece. She punished Fiona vigorously but it made little difference; Fiona just became more defiant. With hindsight, it was obvious to me that this was her response to her devastating loss, but Mum seemed empty of compassion. She told Fiona that she had had no trouble with Dennis and me, so why must Fiona insist on being so different?

  Apart from the ballet lessons Mandy had asked for, Mum didn’t let Fiona join any clubs or let her go out to play with the other kids. She would cause too much trouble, apparently. Fiona was trapped in our house a lot of the time, an imprisonment that caused an already nervy child to gain dangerous momentum. She was an unexploded bomb. A pale, lonely little meteor.

  Telling Julian the story, I felt the old hurt stirring. What was wrong with Mum? Why couldn’t she have loved her? And why was Dad so spineless? He just did what Mum did.

  ‘Well, I see why you’re so protective of her,’ Julian said, subdued. We were drinking beer and I’d lost track of time. ‘Sounds pretty rough.’

  I was picking angrily at the label on my bottle. ‘I find it hard not to hate Mum when I think about how she was. I mean, I was Fiona’s only friend. In the world.’

  ‘Grief makes us do crazy things,’ Julian muttered. ‘I should know.’

  ‘That’s not the way to express grief! Keeping your sister’s baby under house arrest when she should be out playing!’

  Julian leaned over and forced me to look at him. ‘Hey. I know that,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t trying to excuse your mom. All I meant was, maybe she went a bit mad for a while. A bit controlling. Who knows what she was thinking?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what she was thinking,’ I replied hotly. ‘She was thinking, When can I get rid of Fiona? Julian, she sent Fi off to the Royal Ballet when she was eleven. She said it would be best for both of us. How? How was it good for Fi to be sent away from the only family she had? How was it good for me to lose my best friend?’

  Hot tears sawed at my vision. Julian passed me one of the cake napkins. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to sound like I’m on her side. I can hear how awful it was for you. I just meant, maybe your mom didn’t know what else to do with Fiona. And I suggested it because I know from first-hand experience that nobody has any idea how to deal with bereaved people.’

  I watched him warily.

  ‘My mom forced me to move in with her when I lost my wife,’ he explained. ‘She wouldn’t let me out of her sight. For weeks I couldn’t go anywhere without her following, making sure I wasn’t going to end up somewhere I could get into trouble, get upset, you know.’ He smiled sadly; a bittersweet memory. ‘Oh, Mom.’

  The trumpet was still playing, a slow, sad ribbon of sound. The man at the piano appeared almost asleep but I knew he was just lost in the music. ‘Your mum sounds lovely, Julian.’ I tried not to be jealous.

  He grinned. ‘She is. The very, very best.’

  ‘Well, mine isn’t. And I’m not being a brat. I’d love to think, Oooh, Mum didn’t know what to do with Fiona so she sent her to ballet school … But that’s not what happened. Apart from anything else, Mum hated Fiona dancing. She hated anything that drew attention to us. It makes no sense that she’d choose to let Fi train as a performer. I mean, it would have felt like Mandy all over again, wanting to be an actress!’

  Deep anger started to pulse up again, ringed with bitterness and helplessn
ess. It crossed my mind that Julian might think I was mad but I was too worked up to care. I’d never had this conversation with anyone and it felt strangely cleansing. It had been inside me for years, spinning round and round at a low whine.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘And remember, I’m on your side, OK?’

  I smiled briefly.

  ‘Well, on top of that, Mum had spent years trying to stop me and Fi getting too close. Telling me I should make “some better friends”. Julian, there’s no two ways about it. She basically didn’t want me being influenced by Fiona. Turning out like her. So when she realized she couldn’t keep us apart, she sent Fi away.’

  A single tear squeezed out of my eye and I brushed at it furiously with my sleeve. Damn my family. Damn their cruel, conservative little lives. Never hugging Fiona. Never popping her on their knees and checking how she was doing. Getting rid of her at the first opportunity they had, acting like martyrs when Fiona had got a full grant and they hadn’t had to pay a penny.

  Fury ebbed and flowed, more tears tracked down my cheeks, and I didn’t try to stop them.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Julian murmured, when I eventually gestured apologetically at my face, the tears and general air of madness. ‘It’s completely OK. Here.’ He passed me some more cake napkins and I felt gratitude that he hadn’t begged me not to cry, tried to stop me feeling it all. He’d just watched the whole thing with a sympathy that seeped right through to my bones. A deep, understanding kindness that was new to me.

  The strangest thing, I thought – as I discharged tears and snot into a napkin – was that I hadn’t known quite how angry I was with Mum and Dad. How thick and intractable the rage would feel if I ever let it out in the open. Julian is unique, my head told me dazedly. I’m me with him. The real me.

  I’d never known there was a real me.

  Julian stuck out a finger and mopped up a final mascara trail from near my mouth. ‘Here lieth anger,’ he remarked, looking at the black mess on his finger. ‘Anger well spent.’

  The trumpet wound down and lazy applause spattered around the bar. I looked at Julian’s smooth, brown hand with my tears on it and smiled. His hands, I saw, were covered with reminders. And also ‘Sally’ with a big cheesy heart round it.