It occurred to me now that it might not be entirely safe that the only person who knew my travel plans was the man who for the past two months had been schizophrenically declaring his passionate love for and vile hatred of me. I was also aware that a day in London with him, especially after a seven-hour flight and a five-hour time shift, was unlikely to go well. Perhaps missing my flight would be a blessing. Perhaps Greg would take pity on me and let me stay for Christmas; I could hole up in his cosy place in the country, sipping whisky and reading books by a log fire, far from England, far from Matthew.
But no, I was fast-tracked through security and made it to my aisle seat with time to spare. The flight was running behind schedule, which would cause Matthew to wait an extra hour at the other end, cause me to feel too guilty to check my matted hair and apply eyeliner in the bathroom before meeting him, and add to the general misery of the day-that-should-have-been-night before me.
‘You look like a boy.’ Matthew eyed my haircut with disdain.
‘Thanks.’ I fought my jet lag and apprehension and tried to muster a smile.
‘Don’t apologise for being late or anything.’ He grabbed my bag.
‘Um, sorry. It wasn’t exactly my fault,’ I snapped.
‘Never mind. Sorry, that was the wrong foot. Hello Baba.’ I winced involuntarily at the familiar nickname. ‘How was your flight?’
‘Long, but okay,’ I shrugged.
‘Right, well our play is at two, so I thought we’d go to that restaurant under the train-tracks. Nobody should see us there if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘Okay.’ I swallowed, annoyed that that was what I was worried about, even though we were no longer doing anything wrong.
‘My car’s in C, wherever that is.’ Matthew looked confusedly at the blue and yellow signs before us.
I remember only two things about the lunch that followed. The first is diving into the bathroom as soon as we arrived and wincing at my greasy hair and shadowy eyes. My short, blunt, side-parted bob had matted itself to my scalp and, had some cruel person felt the need to attack me with a marker pen as I slept, I would have made an uncanny Hitler. My stomach churned and I sat on the porcelain wishing I could go home and shower and face Matthew another day, in clean clothes and with good hair.
The second thing I remember is the way the waiter treated me as I emerged from the bathroom. Matthew had already found a table and ordered wine and the menus, but my mouth was dry so I approached the bar and asked in my nicest, politest RP if I could please have a glass of water.
‘Certainly, um, Mrs Sumac,’ the waistcoat replied with a vague curling of his lips.
The play was less mortifying, but perhaps only because I dozed through the second half. Matthew and I discussed the set and how the lead was developing the complexities of Willy Loman’s character, but still my cells screamed to be taken home.
Finally I was. I doubt we spoke much as Matthew drove us along the A21 and we arrived at his house. I exchanged stilted pleasantries with Annabelle over a cup of tea and she excitedly presented me with a washing-machine box that she wanted me to jump out of. Though Matthew and I had discussed this plan via email, I now felt sleepy and unimpressed, and asked if maybe we could just ring the bell and have me step from around the corner. While Annabelle was in the loo, Matthew shouted that they’d gone to a lot of effort for me. In the end I folded myself into the cardboard and waited as they rang my mum’s doorbell to say a parcel had arrived at their house by mistake.
‘Surprise!’ I shouted as I burst through the flaps and my mother looked on in astonishment. ‘Merry Christmas!’
As per the tradition I only had my former self to blame for instigating, the neighbours were to descend on my mum’s house for an evening roast on Christmas Day. The morning would be spent unwrapping presents and drinking tea with my mother and James. After a late breakfast, my brother and I would cross town to fill up on chocolate, coffee and clipped small talk with my dad, who would no doubt be in the middle of an elaborate DIY project involving a hole in the ceiling and to which he would be keen to get back. Then we’d return to Mum’s, discussing whether or not we should feel guilty that our father was alone on this of all days, probably concluding that he’d brought it on himself and moving on to the more pressing topic of whose present he’d scrimped on most. The meandering afternoon would be spent half-heartedly reading books I’d been given, helping my mum in the kitchen and being beaten by my brother at various PlayStation games. Around six, I’d rummage through my carry-on-only luggage for something to change into, despair that nothing looked good, before wondering whom I was trying to impress now anyway. Fighting back bile in my throat, I’d choose a red dress and black tights and try parting my hair on the right instead of the left. Finishing with a touch more eyeliner, I’d hurry down the stairs to answer the doorbell, aware that my mum was busy humming along to Annie Lennox and steaming the veg in the kitchen and James always figured someone else would answer the door. And there, before me, would stand the old man I’d loved and fucked for the past three years, next to his wife and several of our other neighbours.
‘Merry Christmas,’ offered Annabelle with a weak smile once I’d fully opened the door. I wondered how much she knew about my October email and events since.
‘Merry Christmas,’ I echoed numbly, before the persona kicked in and I chirped appropriately: ‘Come in! Come in! It’s freezing out there. Can I take your coats? Mum’s in the kitchen, she’ll be up in a second. There are drinks laid out in the living room.’
Barbara, Richard, Beatrice, Valerie, Lydia, Hannah, Graham, Lucy, Matthew and Annabelle were ushered into the warm house. ‘Oh, I love your scarf, was it a present? America’s great, thank you. No, it was all a surprise. Mum nearly fainted. Yes, it’s nice to be back. It would have been a long year without a single trip home. Thanks, it’s pretty short isn’t it? I donated a wig to children with cancer. Oh, yes, I think we might even have some Tanqueray, I’ll just check. Make yourselves at home.’
I avoided Matthew’s eyes. He was mumbling the same nothings as the rest of them, joining in with the festive chit-chat and laughing loudly in the right places, but I knew his tone betrayed scorn. I knew this would be one of those evenings that we used to dissect together afterwards, laughing at the plebeian sheep who wouldn’t know what real living was if it slapped them in the faces. Only, tonight, he would be laughing at me too.
As I asked my mum if there was gin in the cupboard, I began to imagine the email I would no doubt receive tomorrow. Perhaps even later tonight. I shivered involuntarily as I thought of the man upstairs spending the evening scrutinising my clothes and body language, making judgements about how my hair made me less pretty and that my conversation had been flattened by those dumb Americans. I plodded back to our guests, determined not to cry, and handed Valerie her G&T. Annabelle was pulling colourfully wrapped gifts from a carrier bag and my mum appeared behind me, gushing, ‘Oooh, is it present time? Hold on a minute, let me get my camera.’
Annabelle gave me a necklace with six garnets set in a swirling silver pattern. It was lovely and I told her so, whilst asking James to help me with the clasp, and blushing as everyone waited to see how it would look against my throat. After a bit, Hannah began tearing into a DVD and the focus shifted, but Matthew’s eyes lingered a moment longer. James received a book about cars, my mum was given a cribbage board, Lydia tried on a new pair of chenille gloves and Valerie gushed over an ancient hardback dictionary. My last present was a small rectangular box. I knew the scrawled handwriting and hesitated before tentatively peeling at the corners of the Sellotape. Inside was a black Moleskine pad, the size of an iPod. I fanned my fingers through the pages and found each one printed with a square and half a dozen blank lines.
‘For your directorial notes,’ Matthew offered, looking me in the eye.
‘Um, thank you,’ I swallowed, noticing a scribbled message at the front and turning subtly to it, trying to shield the words from those
either side of me.
We are but players in her play, ready to laugh and cry at her whim and never expecting more.
You always get what you want Baba, and I’m sure this will be no different.
Your gentle, once-perfect Knight
‘Right, I think the pork should be ready. Shall we eat?’ sang my mother and everyone began to rise, searching around for their glasses and piling presents neatly beside chair-legs and under tables.
‘You’re welcome,’ whispered Matthew as we descended the stairs.
The rest of the evening was much of the same. I ate and drank and drank and ate, contributing now and again to the conversations around me and trying to ignore the churn in my stomach every time Matthew caught my eye or winked at me while Beatrice related another story about the good old days. After dinner, Matthew wanted to show everyone some W. C. Fields clips, so we piled back into the living room and I gulped my wine before falling asleep propped against an arm of the couch. When I awoke, everyone was saying goodbye and I stumbled blearily from one ‘Merry Christmas’ hug to the next as people found their coats and thanked my mum for a delicious meal. Matthew’s were the final lips to touch my cheek and I found myself half-yawning a ‘Sure’ as he invited me for tea the next day. Annoyed and drunk, I fell into my childhood bed, still wearing my tights, and dreamt about monsters and lovers and creatures that were both yet neither.
The following day, I trudged reluctantly along the pavement to Matthew’s house and pushed the metal gate with a familiar, yet disturbing surge of guilt and secrecy. Matthew opened the door, shielding both of us from the rest of the house with the thick curtain. He was already wearing shoes.
‘Annabelle’s in. We’ll go for a walk.’ He held the door ajar with his foot and turned to take his coat from a hook behind him. With one arm in a sleeve, he slammed the door and brushed by me to open the gate.
We walked in silence to Love Lane, which dead-ended in a cul-de-sac but continued in the form of a narrow path leading over a stile and to the top of a hill overlooking the town.
I don’t remember exactly what was said once we reached leaves, fields and trees. In the crisp Boxing Day air, we imagined ourselves safe from the others, all of the others, even those quilt-coated souls walking their dogs and hurrying home to hot cocoa or mulled wine. Matthew spoke to me, asked me what I thought I was doing, called me a selfish child no doubt. I suppose I could try to make up the words, follow my writing teacher’s advice to ‘show, not tell’, but my mind was beginning to unravel already and it was not so much the technical details of this scene that lodged it in my memory, as the symbolic nature of our last almost-civil conversation occurring on frost-bitten grass, with moisture in both our eyes. Matthew cried round, plopping tears and hissed accusations through clenched teeth. I think he enjoyed displaying the emotion as much as he hated showing me weakness. I cried in desperation, thin flowing streams of salt-water, stinging in the breeze along with his insults. I wanted him to understand. He wanted me to hurt. At times, we raised our voices, at others we reached for each other’s palms. There was no resolution. A spiteful word or two was spat as I left him at my mum’s gate and dozens of emails followed, dissecting my delusional attitude and my cruel, uncaring nature. All I got from the conversation was a cold and a bitter regret at having flown home at all. Sniffing my runny nose unselfconsciously, I folded my clothes and packed my Christmas presents into my 33" x 24" suitcase and felt pure relief that I would be back in America this time tomorrow.
Waiting on platform 9 of Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, I wondered why I’d come. I began to question if Becky would still be the girl she’d been in London, and if I was still the person who’d been invited. There’d been no emails or letters, only a brief phone conversation with Becky’s mom in which I’d told her what time my train would be arriving. I felt sure the past months had changed me: bruised me a little but also made me more grown up and capable. On this narrow stretch of busy concrete, though, I felt like the lost little girl missing the night bus once more.
As I chided myself for being so pathetic, nervous and desperate, bony arms wrapped around me from behind, halting my breath and squashing the flowers I clutched.
‘Nat!’ Becky nuzzled my ear before gleefully grabbing my case and marching me happily towards another platform.
On 30th December, after three nights in separate beds, awkwardly not-quite-flirting with one another and neither of us mentioning our last conversation in London, Becky and I found ourselves alone and tipsy in her living room. Her house was a sprawling wooden affair with a piano in the hall, a well-used Aga in the kitchen and plush suede sofas in the living room beckoning you to recline after selecting a book from the shelves and deciding to stay for ever.
Becky and I danced to Billie Holiday and reminisced about the Blue Box. When our spoken chronology reached the final performance, we both fell silent. Becky took my hand. We swayed together and I moved close to tentatively cup her hip. Becky tilted her head to smile at me. After a hideous pause in which my mind whirled with questions and doubts, I reached on tiptoes to kiss her.
‘About time!’ Becky laughed.
I mocked offence and pushed her to the couch. I kissed her fully now and Becky pulled me close.
We slept in each other’s tangled limbs for three nights, playfully stifling one another’s moans so Becky’s conservatively liberal parents wouldn’t hear. We held hands as she showed me the old part of Philly and chased me around the Liberty Bell. Becky’s friend Darren brought his one-year-old daughter over and I watched Becky cradle the little girl, a daydream beginning to boil. Becky seemed so maternal, so beautifully at ease, and I thought at that moment I understood the appeal of fatherhood; thought I wanted a child with another woman.
But Becky was cool and self-assured. People fell in love with her every day. At a New Year’s Eve party, her male friends jealously told me how lucky I was, but I couldn’t help notice with insecurity the boys who winked and the girls who smiled at my date.
In a booth at an all-night diner, Becky told me I complicated things for her. I made her feel, made her care. She didn’t seem happy about this. She told me that when she was fourteen she began cutting herself. She had last cut herself badly at the Blue Box, with a Stanley knife while they built the set, right before I’d arrived. She looked up from her syrup-drenched pancakes and focused a hard stare on me.
‘If we lived in the same state, I might have to make you date me.’
On New Year’s Day, I watched Becky sleep. My January term, in which I’d opted to assistant direct another play, was about to begin. Tomorrow, my friend Bee, one of the actors from ’Twas, would pull up to Becky’s house and pop her trunk for my bag, then kindly drive me up Interstate 87, back to my chilly dorm room on the still-snowy campus.
Last summer, I thought, I’d been fascinated by a woman who oozed confidence and sexuality, who looked beautiful in the oddest situation and didn’t care what anyone thought of her. Lying in Becky’s sheets now, I felt drawn to the very opposite of what had first interested me. Becky seemed weak. She was a normal girl: shy to be touched, embarrassed by her body, worried. My admiration and jealousy had softened to tenderness and desire, and, in this rare moment of confidence, I recognised it as mutual.
Hours later, Becky gripped me in her driveway and whispered so that Bee couldn’t hear, ‘Would you understand if I said, “I love you for now”?’
I didn’t respond. I looked at Becky’s hair, still tousled from getting up late. I wanted to take care of her. I wanted to settle down and date her. I wanted to return her words.
Instead I muttered, ‘I’ll come back in June.’
Becky’s face spread into a grin, and with a brief hug and a wave to her parents, I folded myself into Bee’s passenger seat.
‘CDs are in the glove compartment – you’re in charge.’
21
Matthew’s daily emails resumed, but I buried myself once more in the theatre department. Carol, the dire
ctor, had prepared a strict schedule for cast and crew alike. In the building by 8am, we were to spend an hour doing a rigorous warm-up, followed by practical workshops of set-building or costume and lighting design; after lunch, we would rehearse, then give and receive notes before a short dinner break, after which we’d run what we’d changed. Every day, for the whole of January. I was beginning to understand why Jess had opted out of January term, the non-compulsory mini-semester Rosella offered for students to gain extra credit, and escaped back to the snow-free joys of Texas.
On the days things went to plan, we were dismissed from the theatre at 8pm and free to raid the costume closet for impromptu dance parties in the dorm common rooms. Busy every day and surrounded by artists and actors, I felt content. I missed Becky and it worried me slightly that she never emailed, but knowing how she felt about me buoyed my confidence and I even found myself flirting with some of the actors.
I went on a couple of dates with Alexandra, a super-skinny Jewish coxswain I’d kissed briefly after one of the senior pub nights the previous semester. Date is perhaps the wrong word as we were limited to campus and, while I never emerged from the theatre before 8pm, Alex had a strict call to be at the boats by 5am. Instead of going to the cinema or holding hands on long walks, making snowmen together or huddling in cafés with chai tea lattes as I imagined doing with imaginary girlfriends on imaginary dates most hours of most days, Alex and I met each night in Bobst café after rehearsal. I wolfed down curly fries while she scraped the cheese from a Caesar salad and we fast-tracked the ‘getting-to-know-you’ stage:
‘How were rehearsals?’
‘Great. How was rowing?’
‘Fine.’
‘Do you like theatre?’
Sixteen, Sixty-One Page 18
