This is Life

by Dan Rhodes

  Those had been Sylvie’s serious drinking days, and Aurélie found it hard to keep up. Aurélie had decided that art college was absolutely for her, and Sylvie had decided that it absolutely wasn’t for her. Sylvie wasn’t surprised by this. She hadn’t expected to end up applying, and she explained that she had only really gone along to make her art therapist happy and to get some free food. Besides, you didn’t get paid to go to art college, and she needed money to get by. She was having second thoughts about hairdressing too. Its main appeal had been that there would always be hair so there would always be work, but she wasn’t sure she quite had the feeling for it. Her personal ambitions were set in stone, but professionally she didn’t know what she wanted to do.

  As the night went on they had opened up to one another, bonding over all sorts of things. Aurélie told Sylvie about the boyfriend she had in her home town, saying they were going to stay together even though she was moving away.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Sylvie. ‘Like that’s going to work.’

  ‘No, we really are staying together. We’ve discussed it.’

  ‘Well, good luck with that.’ She drained her wine, and topped up her glass.

  That was the moment when it dawned on Aurélie that she hadn’t been honest with herself, or with her boyfriend. Sylvie was right: she really didn’t love him enough to keep things going. How could Sylvie have known that? She wondered if she had psychic powers. ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘He’s going to be so . . .’ She pictured the scene that she now knew had to happen. She was going to tear his world apart. ‘Poor Guillaume.’

  ‘He’ll survive. They usually do.’

  Sylvie decided this wasn’t a good time to tell Aurélie about the exes of hers who hadn’t quite made it. Twice she had taken a call from a weeping mother. Both boys had perished in what had been officially declared accidents. One had set up a warehouse dehumidifier in his bedroom, apparently in order to keep condensation off the windows while he slept. It had sucked all the moisture from his body, and he was discovered a few days later, a paper-dry corpse. The other appeared to have slipped on a leaf and fallen head first into a barrel of water from which he had been unable to escape.

  Both, though, had left detailed recent wills, which suggested that these hadn’t been accidents at all. They had both expressed their wish for Sylvie to be at the church, and specified what they wanted her to wear; both times it had been something inappropriate for the situation – too short and too tight, and bright red even though she never wore clothes that were short, tight and bright red.

  She didn’t see what she could do but accept these invitations and go along with their wishes. They had both requested that she sing as their coffins were lowered into the ground. She had a beautiful voice, which she rarely used, and as she stood by their gravesides, singing like a lark in her slutty clothes, everybody wept.

  On both occasions she had been approached by the boy’s mother, who very kindly told her that she was not to feel responsible and that she bore her no ill will. She was glad that they had taken the time to do this, but even if they hadn’t, her sense of guilt would have been minimal. It was tragic, of course; they had both been nice boys and it was awful that they had died, but her role in it all had merely been realising that she didn’t love them after all, and telling them so. She wasn’t to know they were going to end up this way, and she didn’t think for a moment that she had done the wrong thing, that she should have stayed with them. She never spoke about these feelings to anyone, because she knew they would think her cold. She was just being realistic though, and not burdening herself with a guilt that didn’t belong to her.

  As the bottles emptied, Sylvie and Aurélie had started to dwell on their difficult backgrounds. Aurélie had drunk a lot more than she usually did, and she became maudlin as she told Sylvie about her mother’s illness and her slow, sad death, which had finally come when she had been nine years old, and how from that day her father had raised her and her younger brother alone.

  Sylvie came in with a challenge to this: both her parents had died on her eighth birthday, victims of an unexpectedly pure batch of heroin that had hit the streets that summer. They had been good people, she told Aurélie, and talented – her father a jazz drummer and her mother an accomplished stripper. They had loved her from the start, playing her jazz and classical music while she had been in the womb, even though it hadn’t been trendy back then. She smiled as if recounting a trip to the seaside as she told Aurélie how she had been the one to find them lying cold in bed, how from that day she had been alone, how her memories of them grew less and less distinct with each passing day, and how she had spent the rest of her childhood being batted around between foster families, feckless distant relatives and children’s homes, and how she would often run away, inevitably into a situation that was worse than the one she had just escaped from.

  ‘If your father was to drop dead tomorrow,’ she said, ‘I would still be more orphan than you’ll ever be.’

  She made this pronouncement in such a way that Aurélie had to laugh and admit defeat. She had been comprehensively out-orphaned. She wondered how she would have coped if her father hadn’t been there to love, support and encourage her, if she didn’t have her brother to live for – if, like Sylvie, she had been all alone in the world, without a safety net.

  At the end of the night they parted company, but not before exchanging numbers. When Aurélie was alone again her heart filled with pity for the boy from back home, who right now would be sleeping with her picture by his bedside, having gently kissed it goodnight. She cried. At least, she thought, these tears prove I have a heart. Soon she was reconciled to the inevitable, and fell asleep.

  Aurélie had not been able to stop thinking about her day with Sylvie. It helped her to know that she would have a friend when she got to the city, someone who knew her way around. Months later, when she arrived, she called her straight away. ‘It’s Aurélie,’ she said.

  ‘Aurélie? Aurélie who?’ Sylvie had encountered a fair number of Aurélies in her life.

  Sylvie had spared her very little thought since they had parted company. She met a lot of people, and had no reason to assume that she would ever see the girl again. Very quickly her time had filled up with work and drama, and their day together had been buried under a mound of subsequent experiences. Unlike Aurélie, she had not spent the intervening months longing for a reunion.

  ‘Aurélie Renard.’ There was silence at the other end of the line. ‘You grabbed my hair.’

  ‘I used to grab everyone’s hair.’

  Aurélie was crushed. Sylvie Dupont was slipping away from her. She carried on. ‘I’m the failed orphan you met at the art college. We drank wine in my hotel room.’

  ‘Oh. Let me think.’ A faint recollection had appeared, and begun to grow. ‘Yes, I remember. Blondelle’s cousin, right?’

  ‘That’s it.’ Aurélie had never felt so relieved.

  ‘How is Blondelle?’

  ‘She’s still pretty pissed off about her name.’

  Sylvie laughed. ‘And how about you?’

  ‘Well, I’m in Paris now, and I was wondering if you were around at all?’

  Sylvie could barely recall a thing about the girl, but she knew she had her filed in her memory alongside people she liked well enough. She didn’t want to be mean to her. She would invite her out for coffee and be friendly for thirty minutes and then drop a heavy enough hint for her to leave her alone from then on. She was always happy to meet people, but she was wary about getting close to anyone. She wasn’t in the market for making new friends, and she didn’t want this girl who was just in from the country to make a nuisance of herself by thinking they were closer than they were. If necessary she would get her off her back by setting her up with an ex. They arranged to meet the following day.

  Once she had put down the phone, Sylvie was surprised to find memories of her day with this Aurélie Renard coming back to her, as if they had really been friends, and she even surp
rised herself by looking forward to seeing her again. She wanted to find out what had become of Guillaume.

  Guillaume had met Aurélie at the railway station on her return from Paris, and though she had hoped to wait until they were in a private place before initiating the Big Conversation, she found she couldn’t. As they walked through the town on the way back to her house he had kept making references to their future, and how wonderful it was that their love was so strong that they were going to be able to stay together in spite of living hundreds of miles apart.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she had said. ‘About that.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About our future together . . .’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that.’

  ‘Me too. It’s all I ever think about.’

  ‘No,’ she said. She stopped walking, and he stopped too, and she looked away and spoke softly. ‘I’ve been thinking about it in a new way.’

  In an instant, Guillaume felt everything that was good about his life slip away. A tear ran down his cheek and, choking with emotion, he begged her to reconsider. Passers-by stopped to watch him as he clung to the wreckage of love. He fell to his knees. ‘All I ask is that you give me one last chance.’

  She hated to see him making such a spectacle of himself. ‘Well, OK then,’ she said. ‘I’ll give it some thought, but don’t hold out too much hope.’

  He stood up, and they walked back to her house in silence. She waited until they were indoors before telling him he had to be brave, and ending things once and for all.

  That night Guillaume built a fire on his front lawn, and fed into the flames everything he had that reminded him of her. Love letters, once cherished photographs, clothes she had left behind when she had stayed over, gifts she had given him in happier times. He went back inside, but everything he saw reminded him of her. The pan he had used to make them hot chocolate, the mattress they had lain on as he held her in his arms, and the television on which they had watched their favourite shows. By the end of the evening there was nothing left but the clothes he stood up in, and then he realised she had helped him choose these clothes, she had touched them with her soft, slender and occasionally paint-splattered fingers, and so they came off too and went on to the fire. By this point news had spread, and people had come to watch. They leaned on his fence. Some offered words of encouragement, urging him to think positively and telling him that there were plenty more fish in the sea, while others were unkind, telling him they weren’t surprised that she had left, that she was probably going to look for somebody with a bigger penis.

  Aurélie had felt awful for poor Guillaume, but it was only when she related the story to Sylvie that she finally allowed herself to see the funny side. Soon the girls were crying with laughter, and the thirty-minute coffee turned into six hours. By the end of it Sylvie had allowed herself to become as enamoured of Aurélie as Aurélie was of her.

  Aurélie grew closer to Sylvie than she did with anyone from art college, and this was why she had been the one she had called when she found herself in trouble, and she was the one whose apartment she was in, surrounded by shopping bags as she scooped purée into the mouth of a small boy whom she had, as Sylvie gleefully pointed out, sort of abducted.

  Sylvie lent Aurélie her backpack to help her get everything home, and together they filled it with nappies, bottles of special milk and all the other things they had bought for him at the supermarket, mainly duplicates of what had been in the bag. They had needed a spare set of clothes too, but hadn’t been in the best of neighbourhoods for that kind of shopping. The rubberwear emporia weren’t much use to them, so they had found themselves with little choice but to go to a souvenir shop. They picked out a T-shirt with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it, and some trousers made from Mona Lisa fabric.

  The owner, a gruff and gigantic man with a walrus moustache, came over and asked them what size they were looking for. Aurélie had no idea how to answer.

  ‘What do you mean what size?’

  ‘I mean how large or small would you like the clothes to be?’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  After a long silence, the man took the initiative. ‘Are they for your baby?’ He nodded in Herbert’s direction.

  ‘Er . . . yes, he’s my baby. And it’s all for him. He loves his home city. He’s very proud to be a Parisian.’

  Herbert confirmed the extent of his civic pride by blowing a raspberry.

  ‘So,’ the man continued, ‘what size is he?’

  ‘Well,’ she pointed at him, ‘he’s that size.’

  ‘But how old is he?’ His face was beginning to betray extreme impatience.

  ‘Oh. That’s a good question.’ She had no idea. ‘Thank you for asking.’ She thought back to what Herbert’s mother had told her: ‘He’s . . . er . . . Aquarius.’

  The owner raised his hands into the air, and clenched his fists. His face lit up with delight. ‘A-ha!’ he cried. ‘A puzzle! I love puzzles. As my wife always says to me, If there is one thing you love, Théophile, it’s puzzles. So, Aquarius . . .’ He bunched his enormous fists over his eyes. ‘He must be about . . .’ His fists unfolded to reveal delighted eyes. ‘. . . nine months old?’

  Aurélie supposed he was right. ‘Yes, exactly.’ She applauded, and jumped on the spot. ‘He’s exactly about nine months old.’ It sounded close enough, and she was glad to know.

  ‘And what’s he called?’

  ‘Herbert.’

  ‘Air-bear?’

  ‘No – Herbert. H-H-H . . .’ She pulled the mirror from her bag.

  The backpack was crammed with baby stuff. Aurélie couldn’t believe how much she had spent. The money she had saved from working over the summer, money she had hoped would last her until at least Christmas was evaporating fast. She wondered how anybody could afford to have one of these things all year round. She had cancelled her regular weekend shifts to give her time to concentrate on her project, so that would mean even less money coming in than usual. She was going to have to ask her boss for any work going once she had given the baby back. She was about to buckle the backpack closed when Sylvie stopped her.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘One more thing.’ She raced into her bedroom, and came back out with something in her hand. ‘It’s a mean world out there,’ she said, ‘and you might need this.’ Smiling, she held her offering out to Aurélie.

  It was a gun.

  Aurélie froze. It took a while before she could speak again. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Er, it’s a gun. I know it’s small, but it’s still a gun. It works just the same as a big one.’

  ‘But . . . what’s it for?’

  Sylvie looked at her as if she had just asked her why Spain was so full of Spaniards. ‘It’s for shooting people.’

  Aurélie still didn’t reach out for it.

  ‘Well, if you don’t want it, that’s up to you. If you think you can take care of Herbert all by yourself. It’s fully loaded and ready to go.’

  Aurélie stared at it. ‘Have you ever used it?’ She dreaded the answer.

  ‘Yes. I’ve waved it around a bit. I’ve not shot anyone with it, though. I’ve not had to, they generally just run away. It’s got me out of quite a few difficult situations. I carry it around quite a lot of the time, just in case, but I can live without it for a few days. And don’t look at me like that. If you were on your own in the world you might want a bit of protection too. It’s my security blanket.’

  Aurélie looked at the gun. She had always had a feeling that there were sides to her friend that she would rather not know about, and she had uncovered one of them right here. She wondered how many times Sylvie had been armed when they had been out and about together. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘From some guy. He was the protective type. When I told him I was leaving he tied me up for a while, but he was a big softie underneath it all and after a couple of days he let me go. It had finally sunk in that I really wasn’t g
oing to stay with him, and he gave it to me then. He said he would feel he was always taking care of me if he knew I had it, that if anyone ever tried anything funny I would be able to pop a cap in their ass. It was quite sweet, really. Apparently it’s a ladies’ gun. That’s what he told me, anyway.’

  It was small enough to fit in a handbag, and it had a blue finish.

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ Aurélie could feel herself shaking.

  ‘You don’t have to shoot anyone with it. Just point it at them and they’ll go away. If anybody bothers Herbert . . .’ She released the safety catch, and finished her sentence with a chilling clunk.

  Aurélie still didn’t look convinced, and Sylvie continued her pitch. ‘If you really have to use it, which you won’t, just point it in the right direction and – blam. Just make sure you only use it on someone who deserves it. You don’t even have to kill them if you don’t want to. Just hurt them. Go for the knees if you really want them out of action. I’ve tried it out in the countryside, so I know it works. I shot a few tree stumps.’

  Aurélie hated guns. She had never wanted to be around them, let alone carry one. But she thought of how ill equipped she was to protect Herbert from the world at large, and all kinds of improbable but petrifying scenarios flashed through her mind. It struck her that she hadn’t been joking about keeping Herbert alive for a week. It really was an urgent responsibility. The following Wednesday she was going to hand him back to his mother in one piece, and she wasn’t going to let anybody get in the way of that.

  She reached out and took the gun, and the moment she did her apprehension melted away. She felt a surge of power and excitement, and it was not an unpleasant sensation. Nobody was going to come near Herbert now. She put her finger on the trigger, to get a feel for it. The gun fitted her hand perfectly: seven hundred and fifty grammes of cold blue steel.