The Laundry Basket

by G. M. C. Lewis

  Her father eventually passed away from liver failure in December 2007, three months after Fujimori was extradited back to Peru, and on the very day the once-heroic president was convicted and sent to prison.

  Her mother had always maintained that he died from a broken heart.

  Lorenza opens the email from her sister, which briefly outlines her plans to take the kids and Ophelia, her wet nurse-cum-maid, down to the house in Acapulco to try and get some respite from the intense summer heat. Guillermo has to stay in Mexico City for work. Will Lorenza be flying back to Peru for Christmas? She hasn’t thought that far ahead yet, but she supposes she ought to start planning it soon – it is no walk in the park, travelling with two young babies. She’d seen on the news that England was having the wettest summer on record – poor Lorenza, it must be absolutely abhorrent. Why doesn’t she go on Skype once in a while? Rosella misses her baby sister.

  Lorenza is only too aware that she doesn’t miss Rosella, her older sister, for whom everything in life seems to come on a platter. Lorenza had watched her sister squander the gifts that were given to her – gifts that she would have cherished. Rosella’s university education had been paid for. She had partied hard for two and a half years and then dropped out just before her finals. Lorenza had had to work as a secretary in a law firm and save her money for three years in order to afford the opportunity to study economics at Goldsmiths College in London. Rosella, with her stunning good looks and hourglass body, had fallen in love with Guillermo a year after leaving university. He was successful and they were happy with each other, yet Rosella had told Lorenza of at least three affairs which she had had since her marriage to Guillermo. Lorenza had never been in love. And now her children were palmed off on a wet nurse – children that Lorenza would have loved and cared for as if her life depended upon it.

  Lorenza knew that, even as a child, she had coveted all that Rosella was blessed with. During their holiday to Bali, her father, who at the time was in receipt of a great many free things, accepted a free lift from a tuk tuk driver that ended up including a complimentary tour of a textiles factory. The sting was taken out of the hard sell at the end of the tour because the factory manager was highly enamoured with 16-year-old Rosella. By the time they left, not only had they not been forced into buying anything, but Rosella had been gifted a free sarong. Lorenza did not think she had ever seen anything more beautiful. Lorenza knew that it would do no good to ask her sister if they could share it – Rosella never shared anything with her sister as a matter of principle, and if she knew Lorenza wanted what she had, it would make her flaunt it all the more.

  But Rosella knew, she always knew, and she could see when Lorenza had it bad. Lorenza could see that Rosella’s behaviour was highly affected for her benefit, but there was still nothing she could do about it, and she watched as Rosella wallowed in the beauty of her gift. Lorenza begged her parents to buy her a sarong as well, but Bali had been more expensive than they had expected and the budget had been tightened to just the essentials of accommodation, food and booze for her father. A sarong was out of the question.

  The whole family were sitting on the beach one evening, watching a glorious sunset, as some local fishermen barbecued freshly-caught fish over an open fire nearby. Rosella was talking to a local boy and her father was doing his best to explain to the fishermen that cooking fresh fish on a fire was a crime when you could be making lovely ceviche instead, much to his wife’s amusement. Rosella had taken off the sarong and she and the boy had gone down to the sea to swim. Lorenza was captivated by the deep violet and clementine sunset, but her eyes kept straying to her sister’s clothes, with the sarong lying on top. Her mother had gone over to help her father demonstrate the making of ceviche. No sooner had she walked away than Lorenza stood up and walked over to her sister’s clothes, picked up the sarong, took it to the fire and, without hesitating for a moment, dropped it on the smouldering embers. She clearly remembers watching the smoke spiralling out of the material thicker and faster until finally the blackening blue and white material was engulfed in flames.

  She had smiled to watch her sister’s instrument of control and torture burn. She had made no attempt to conceal her crime and was beaten soundly afterwards.

  Lorenza is shaken from her memories by loud sounds of grunting and groaning next door. What on earth was Edgar doing?! Maybe he really had got lucky last night and someone was in there with him enjoying the benefits of his exertions. Dear old Edgar; he really is a very strange man. She hears distant chanting from the Millwall stadium and thinks of Pedro, another strange but lovable man. She cannot help but feel a deep sense of kinship with these people who she has shared her life with now for two years, but however enjoyable she feels that they are to spend time with, she also understands by their very nature that they are transient, fluid, nomadic people, physically to an extent, but emotionally to the core. They share each other’s light, but conceal their own darkness from each other.

  Lorenza sits down at her desk and opens her books. The words flow over her and she realises after an hour that she has absorbed nothing. She is tired and hungry. She can hear sirens in the distance and she worries for Pedro and his two friends, who went to the game. She tries to refocus on the pages. She thinks of her mother and the six hundred dollars that she has asked her for and she wonders how she will find the money. She thinks of her father and remembers what he had said to her after he had spanked her for burning her sister’s sarong. He had held her and wiped her tears and then spoken to her, so closely that she could smell the gin on his breath, and in his rich, deep timbre – a voice that could hold small groups of people bewitched for hours – he’d said:

  “Lorenza, you are not like Rosella. These things that you desire, you only think that you desire them, but you do not really need them. Rosella wants you to think that you need them because she wants you to be like her, down here.” He held his hand near the ground. “But you have soul, Lorenza; you have more spirit than you know and when you understand this, these material things will no longer have importance to you. When you understand that your gift is the greatest of all, my beautiful Lorenza, you will learn to fly and even your body will no longer matter.” He had held his fingers pinched together like a cage and, looking her in the eye with his big, dark, brown eyes, he had slowly opened them until his hand was a smooth trembling canvas.

  Lorenza turns off her light and lies on her front on her bed. She wishes she could just lie like this forever, not needing to move, without hunger, responsibility or sadness.

  She thinks about her father’s words and wonders if her body already no longer matters.

  Slippers

  Barbara opens the fridge and looks inside at the shelves, packed with a vast array of delicious items, and says:

  “Honestly, the things that man said to me, it was awful – and do you know what Andy did about it? Nothing, not a bloody thing! I really don’t feel like going in there tomorrow.”

  “They need to look after you, my love, and if they’re not going to do it, you need to look after yourself. Without you to keep those temps on the straight and narrow, I don’t think they’d even have a business.” John flicks his ash out of the kitchen door.

  “Well, I don’t know, I’ll see how I feel in the morning.” Barbara reaches into the fridge and takes out some skimmed milk and, with one last rueful look inside, closes the door. “Do you want a tea, John?”

  “No love, I’m just going to finish this fag and I’d better get to bed. I’m going to try a different route in in the morning.”

  “Alright, I’ll be up in a bit.” With her tea, Barbara goes through to the living room. She sits on the couch and switches on the box with the remote. She puts on her TV glasses and then flicks through the channels rapidly, stopping every once in a while and whispering the name of the programme at the bottom of the screen to herself. On one channel there’s a cycling race, and she thinks of the girl on Friday who had caused all the trouble at ISIS. She’d s
tripped off in front of everybody and then, cool as a cucumber, put her cycling gear on and, helmet in hand, walked out. All the temps had clapped like she was some kind of hero. Well, the real heroes of this world are the ones who stick around to clean up the mess afterwards. The customer, Mr Kent, had obviously been beside himself but still, that was no excuse for the things that he’d said. He’d called her the c-word a number of times and been very threatening – a right little muck-spreader, as her mother would have said. She didn’t know what she would have done if Donnie hadn’t been there to get the rest of the staff in order – she thought there might be a riot at one point. Finally, she’d managed to get in enough words between his ranting to promise him that his unit would be returned to him first thing Monday morning and he’d hung up.

  “The Black Swan,” she mutters under her breath. This was the one about the ballet dancer who went mad. Barbara’s mother had taken her to see the ballet once when she was a little girl and she’d been entranced by the graceful magic of the dancers. She’d started taking lessons and she was good. She was flexible and surprisingly light on her feet for her size – she’d always been a big girl for her age. They’d had to order special ballet slippers for her, but Miss Beauvoir had been very encouraging and, even though some of the girls had made fun of her and called her the ‘Giant Carrot’, she stuck at it. When the class came to putting on a production of Swan Lake, she was amazed to be given the lead role. She’d practiced for that show as if her life had depended on it and she still remembered waking in the night with aching cramps all over her body. They were worst in her feet, which she’d grab with an “Ah, ah, ah, ah,” as she massaged the spasms out of them.

  On the night of the performance, Charlie Oliver had told her he wasn’t going to be able to hold the lifts as he’d put his back out, and suddenly she’d felt gargantuan and certain that she would be a laughing stock. Miss Beauvoir had dried her tears and told her that people would remember her for what she had done, not what others hadn’t, and so she’d gone on and given the performance of her life. At the end of the show, the crowd had roared their approval and when she and her friends were leaving the venue, John Letz (who, though two years ahead of her in school, was already four inches shorter than her) had approached her and taken her to one side and offered her his commiserations on the performance. She was taken aback and asked what he thought he meant. He said to her that he thought it was a shame that such a fine dancer as herself wasn’t able to find a real man strong enough to partner her on stage. Barbara had said, “And you think that you’d be strong enough to manage those lifts?” with more than just a hint of disparagement in her voice. No sooner had she said the words than his hands were round her waist and she was off the floor. “I reckon I could,” he said, without a hint of a wobble in his voice or his arms. There’d never been another man for her.

  *

  Yesterday had been their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and he’d taken her out to Gio Gios in Clapham. The evening had been hilarious; there’d been a scene at a nearby table where a young man had clearly bitten off more than he could chew with his date, a dynamite blond who had lost her rag with him and proceeded to pour every drink in reach over his head. Poor bloke, but she and John had had to laugh after they’d gone. John was driving, so he only drank water, but Barbara had a nice bottle of Pinot Grigio to herself and both of their complimentary glasses of grappa after the meal. Even so, it was John who said he was feeling a bit tipsy as they walked out of the restaurant. She loved him dearly and he was the kindest man she knew, but he was soft in the head sometimes – drunk on water!

  The film cuts to the second set of adverts since she had turned it on. Which channel was this? It seemed to be five minutes of film and five minutes of adverts. First an advert for pizza comes on, thick and juicy and covered in peppers and pepperoni, with stringy mozzarella stretching away from a slice as it is pulled away from the golden brown body of the main event, yellow cheesy goo oozing from the hollowed-out crusts. This is followed by an advert for a burger chain: plenty of nice close-ups of the meat pattie, sizzling away on a barbecue grill, and then the cheese is shown melting atop the thick meaty burger, relish is squeezed from between the bap and the meat as the soft floury bun is pushed down, sealing the deal. Barbara’s belly rumbles. This is all she needs on the first day of her diet! Next is an advert for indigestion tablets and this is immediately followed by an advert for fried chicken: chicken legs coated with a golden, crispy, seasoned coating, delivered in a bucket complete with tubs of creamy coleslaw, baked beans and French fries – at the mention of French fries, a camera shot of some French fries being tossed into the air is shown; it is a happy, vigorous image of fries taking flight. The chicken advert is followed by an advert for a product that helps relieve the pain of constipation; at the end of the advert, a sad-looking girl is released from a cage and then shown spinning happily in green fields with her arms in the air. No doubt having just done an enormous pooh, thinks Barbara to herself. “Go girl,” she mutters under her breath. Following an advert for a company that sells foot-long sandwiches, packed to the gunnels with juicy fillings, there is an advert for an artificial saliva solution for use in the treatment of dry mouth and, finally, the film comes back on.

  It’s all too much for Barbara – she gets up and walks through to the kitchen and opens the fridge. She gazes longingly at the cheese drawer, then pulls it open and beholds the ultra-mature vintage cheddar, blue veins threaded across a wedge of stilton; an orange cheese speckled with tiny chopped pieces of jalapeno pepper; the soft compliant creaminess of camembert. She picks up all four cheeses and, holding them gently to her breast, takes a plate from the crockery cupboard and puts them on it, then goes to the biscuit cupboard to get some digestives. In the cupboard in front of the biscuits, she is surprised to see an apple with a small sharp knife next to it. Under the apple is a piece of paper and written on the paper in John’s writing it says, ‘A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step’. She sighs, puts the cheese back in the fridge and puts the apple and the knife on the plate instead, walks back through to the living room and sits back down.

  The apple is disappointing and by the time she has finished quartering, peeling, coring and eating it, the film has cut to adverts again, so she switches off the TV, puts the plate and knife back in the kitchen, checks the back door, turns off the lights and goes upstairs. Barbara brushes her teeth, takes off her dressing gown and warm, furry pink slippers and gets into her side of the bed. She turns off her bedside light and lies in the darkness, listening to John’s steady breathing next to her. John has never snored, but there is a slight rasping to his breathing. They had only ever had words about his smoking once and it had been their only real argument in twenty-five years of marriage. She lies in the dark and imagines what life would be like without him, that warm, breathing, loving body that is so close to her it has become a part of her. She cannot imagine it and it brings a lump to her throat to even try. Silly to think like this, anyway; John is like her little power pack – she can’t remember the last time he’d even had a cold. He cycled twenty miles a day and when she didn’t have him redecorating their home at weekends, he’d be off walking in Scotland or Wales or night fishing down in Devon. John was as strong, if not stronger, as the day she’d first met him.

  Barbara snuggles up to John’s back and goes to sleep listening to that quiet rasping.

  *

  John is shaking her awake:

  “Come on love, let’s get you back to bed. Don’t worry, I’ll tidy this lot up.”

  She is standing in front of the fridge. The door is open and lying at her feet is the empty plastic triangular shell from a packet of stilton and a circular wooden box that had once contained a large camembert cheese.

  “Oh dear,” she says as she allows herself to be steered away from the fridge and back towards the stairs. The stone floor is cold under her bare feet.

  Silk Sheets

  Chloe drops Karl of
f at his football game and then opts to use the back roads through Dartford, Erith and Thamesmead, instead of the A2 – whether it’s quicker or not, she doesn’t know, but she loves to drive past her old haunts and see what has changed and what has stayed the same.

  As she passes the huge new young offenders institute off Western Way, she remembers that Janice and Peter will be arriving back from Thailand tomorrow evening, so tonight is her last opportunity to use the flat in Clapham – unbelievable; she’d had the place available for two whole weeks and not yet had the chance to use it once. Last night was the worst – she’d really thought she was in business with that young guy, who’d called himself the Arctic Donkey, and she’d actually been in the car and well on her way when he texted back with a lame excuse to say he wouldn’t be able to make it after all and some other time and so on. Yeah, right! Well, Jim was tied up with work all weekend, just to make a change, and Karl was planning a sleepover with his pals tonight, so this was it, her last opportunity, possibly for some time. All she needed was a man!

  She pulls into Belmarsh and drives to the far end of the car park where the visitors’ spaces are located. It’s busy today and she ends up having to block in a Clio that is blatantly taking up more space than it should. She thinks that maybe if all else fails and she can’t get a date off the dating website, she’ll just go to Inferno’s, which is the main meat market on Clapham High Street. If she can’t snare a man in there, then she really will be losing her touch. Still, she’d prefer to have one in the bag, so to speak. Going out clubbing on her own seems a bit desperate for a woman of her age.

  Chloe walks into the visitor’s reception and hands over her ID for checking. As she’s standing there, a tall, well-built black man is buzzed through the security doors and stands next to her at the reception. Wow, thinks Chloe, that would do nicely. Her body seems to go slightly loose as she angles herself a little more in the man’s direction. Her hand subconsciously goes up to her hair and she begins to fiddle with her hairclip.