Last night was my third night away from David and only two weeks since my last stay, but I’d missed Will more than I thought possible. Plus he begged me to stay. Being wanted made the choice irresistible. I told Will it was a big risk for both of us, but more for him, and that I thought David was already looking for him. Will said, ‘I’m a grown-up, Rachel, you don’t need to worry about me.’ When he was asleep I imagined whispering in his ear all the things I wanted to say.
The sun shines a square on the carpet through the window. Will clears his throat. ‘We could go for a coffee or something while the wash is on.’
Nausea rises, telling me I need to get home – my working persona is fracturing, and there are no more excuses. I don’t know what I was thinking by staying away again last night; or maybe I do. Something’s got to give. I know no other way to make it happen.
I pull out the keys and put on my jacket. ‘I have to get back.’
He moves closer, watching the floor, downtrodden. He looks like Bessie in the way some owners take on the manner of their animals.
‘Look, if I really have to,’ I say, my voice catching. ‘I could drop you off, but you’ll need to be quick getting your stuff together.’
‘Come in with me for a bit. Please.’
I button up my jacket with shaky fingers. Will lifts my hands and kisses them.
‘Spend some time,’ he says. ‘Let me look after you for once. I need to talk to you.’
David’s anger will be as acute if I get home now or in an hour. It’s more rational to spend the time with Will. Or maybe David will be out like last time and won’t even know when I get home. Unusually I’ve had no texts from him overnight. Perhaps he’s finally given up on me.
‘OK,’ I say, ‘but I can’t stay long.’
Will slips on his denim jacket and grabs the laundry bag, putting his arm across my shoulder as we walk out. I cough and move away. Bessie tries to follow but Will uses his foot to push her muzzle back through the gap in the door. ‘You wait till later, girl,’ he says to her. ‘I’m not leaving you for another woman just yet.’ He laughs and looks at me but I find myself turning the other way. He puts the bag of dirties in the boot next to the sack of dog biscuits I’ve brought from home.
Every time I’ve tried to return to the caravan to feed the stray dog, David has demanded a minute-by-minute itinerary of my movements – this listing of events the kind of conversation we can handle. I’ve hoped that perhaps the dog has smelt the camp fire by now and found its way to the group of activists. Last night, when the pressure of David’s focus became too much, I caved in and came to Will’s, though by the time I’d made my decision it was already too late to go via the woods. I knew I’d be able to pass by the caravan this morning on my way home and give the dog some food.
Will’s road is in the suburban outreaches of town. The houses here are a mixture of styles and eras, ranging from pre-war bungalows like Will’s, to 1960s purpose-built flats, plus a few modern terraces tacked on wherever land was available. Some of the more recent blocks are uniform bunkers with small windows, built for people with too little cash to complain, and the homes are connected by a helter-skelter of roads. Will is an incongruous presence among the families and elderly here, and if it weren’t for him stepping into his gran’s house – somehow winging it with the council to pass the place on to him after she died – then he would be based elsewhere; probably down in the valley among the pubs he inhabits most evenings, without the curse of the steep and drunken walk home.
Above the rooftops white clouds collage a blue sky. For once there is little wind. Hard winter light ricochets from the windows of the flats and, when touched by the sun, these drab buildings take on an air of calm and hope. I sit in my car next to Will and wait a beat before I start the ignition, allowing the moment to be the moment, and not the future or the past.
As I pull out, the sun sits low and cuts into our eyes through the windscreen. I squint and angle my head to see past the glare as we go round a corner. Will is watching me. I pretend not to notice even though I feel the prickle of his gaze on my neck. My expression is taut and I turn the wheel with a flourish, aware of his adoration but angry at myself for making it matter.
The launderette isn’t far and we park directly in front of the window. Two large panes form an exterior wall on either side of a glass door, and the huge window displays money-off posters, some new, some old and bleached. Scraps of paper dangle from crusty Sellotape. Christmas lights edge the frame of the window, and at the centre of each one is a dot of lit colour, barely visible in the bright light. If it wasn’t for this reminder I would have forgotten that the season of goodwill is beginning. There’ll be bonuses to pay at the office, and David’s displeasure will be signalled to those who go without.
Will hops on to the pavement from the small elevation of my 4×4, his movement practised but with a touch of cumbersome confidence, and he whistles, collecting the bag from the back seat. As he shuts the door, he spins on his heels to face the shop and we walk inside to a force field of thick steamed air; a chemical heat swelling to escape the building. Rows of tired machines edge the room, and a few customers stand beside them. Other people sit on a wooden bench that runs along the middle of the floor, and every one of them turns and stares. Will rests his arm on my shoulders and looks straight ahead, swaggering. We reach the back of the shop and sit on plastic garden chairs, where Will takes a phone call and swivels away from me to talk in whispers. His chair wobbles back and forth. The heat in the room weighs like a drift of tiredness, and my eyes lose focus as I stare at the industrial floor tiles. I’m reminded of the university laundry years ago where the floor tiles were exactly the same and where I first saw David.
My university was in the Midlands, and the campus launderette was where students brought card games and drinks to hang out and chat, like tourists in a club of domesticity; a world in which I was already a fully paid-up member. I was at uni to work hard, I had no choice, but most students were in it for the social life, and the launderette was just more recreation, test-running adulthood with tasks still too new to have become mundane. Posters of gigs and demos arranged by politics students plastered the walls and windows, and the room hovered in a permanent twilight – a happy arrangement for our nocturnal lifestyles. Everyone enjoyed washing their jeans, pretending to be that boxer-short boy from the advert.
A few weeks into the first term of my second year I was in the launderette doing my weekly wash when David came in with some friends. This was the closest I’d ever been to him, and I was intrigued by campus whispers about the cool new bloke who’d taken a gap year in America. He was dressed differently to the rest of us: he wore colourful T-shirts with big logos, baggy shorts and puffy trainers with the tongue sticking out. My shopping habits were built round limited funds, and I bought the bulk of my clothes from charity shops out of necessity, but for many others this impoverished style was merely an ironic nod towards the tasteless – anything new or sensible, especially bought by a student’s parents, was distressed to hide the love invested. David and his posse – a group of five young men who tripped around him attempting to emulate his surfing-shirted, golden-haired style – were like a series of pastel-toned flares set off against the Oxfam-smelling greys and blacks of the rest of us. He was an apparition from an alternate universe, his clothing sending the subliminal message that there were places in the world about which we could only fantasize, where sunshine and positivity reigned free.
I caught fragments of his conversation across the buzz of the machines: the upward lilt he tacked on to the end of all his sentences, dropping in the occasional ‘do the math’. I shook out my clothes with snaps of aggression, thinking David to be one of those backpacking trustafarians who received weekly food parcels from home and drove their gran’s duffed-up Fiat. As David continued his chat, I could tell he was checking me out – the only girl on her own in the room – and I was struck by the continuity and persistence of his American dialect,
and the sure and easy way he held himself: one foot up on the bench exposing a tanned calf, arms loose at his sides. If it had been anyone else I would have sneered at this impostor and his attempts to invigorate our sodden university with some transatlantic cool, but he was so unaware of his displacement, so convinced by his demeanour, that he actually carried it off.
A week later and his tray nudged mine in the canteen queue. ‘Oh, gee, I’m so sorry,’ he said, mopping up my spilt tea. Further down the line as we chatted, we discovered we were both on a Business Studies BA, him a year behind due to his sojourn in the States. There were white marks round his wrist and on a couple of fingers, as if he’d recently removed some jewellery; a cultural chameleon returning slowly to the style of his current pack. By the time we reached the till he’d asked me out for a drink, the invitation tacked on to a stretch as he reached across for a sachet of sugar, and his neck came close enough for me to smell his aftershave and see the tan line that framed his neck. The whole manoeuvre was casual enough to convince me that he asked girls out every day. The cash-desk woman – regulation paper hat pinned at an angle, red lipstick bleeding into the cigarette creases round her lips – was silent, waiting for my money, and for my answer to David. All I could think was that he was new around here, that maybe he hadn’t heard about the steady line of boys who came into my bed, or of the wounded few who tried to see me again. I knew everyone talked about me, I saw the way they looked at me, so by now David surely had to know. Perhaps he simply didn’t care. This was new; here was someone who operated along the same lines as I did, who pleased themselves and to hell with what other people thought. I was so shocked I said yes.
Now, a man walks across the launderette towards Will. Will stands. The two shake hands and the man claps the grip together with his other palm, Will’s hand sandwiched in the middle.
‘All right, mate, how you doing?’ Will asks.
‘All good, mate, all good. Glad I bumped into you.’ The man keeps hold of Will’s hand, pumping the shake for a bit longer, then he stops and pulls Will towards him. His voice lowers but I’m close enough to hear. ‘Been meaning to look you up to say thanks, you know, for what you did. It meant a lot.’
‘No problem, mate.’ Will coughs to the side and tugs his arm a little to loosen the grip, but the other man holds fast. ‘I mean, enough’s enough, right?’
‘You got that right.’
Will slides his hand free and stands back to create a few inches between the two of them. The man nods his head towards me with eyebrows raised, and flicks a glance from me back to Will.
‘Yeah, yeah, she’s cool,’ Will says.
The man wipes his nose on his index finger. ‘Sounds like Darren won’t be up to his old tricks after the state you left him in.’ He moves a little too close again. ‘Think he got the message, right? Last I heard he was heading for Timbuktu. Don’t think you’ll be welcome in that local no more though.’ They laugh as Will looks to the floor, and the two men shuffle their feet. Will flicks me a shy smile and winks.
‘Well,’ the man says, ‘a favour for a favour. Thought I should let you know someone’s interested in your business, more than wanting a little slice. I’d think about switching venues if I were you.’
‘OK, right. Cheers, mate.’ Will scratches his head. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘It’s only a rumour, that’s all, but you can’t be too careful.’
‘I’ll keep an eye out.’ Will glances at me and I stare at the floor, pretending I’m not listening. ‘Look, I’ll catch up with you soon. You know . . .’ I look up to see him tipping his head at me with a couple of nods. ‘I better go.’
‘Yeah, yeah, OK, but you should also stay away from that job rehousing those tree-huggers. Same crew’s on their case that’s been asking about you.’
Will straightens up. ‘And which crew might that be then?’
‘Can’t say, mate, not my place, just keep away if anyone tries to get you involved. You’ll end up on the wrong side of the fence, if you get my drift.’
‘It was never my bag that one. Got nothing against a bit of peaceful protest.’
‘Well, you know, can’t imagine it’ll be much bother, what with all their Gandhi bullshit.’
Will looks at me nervously and puts a hand to the man’s back, turning the two of them towards the window.
‘Look, thanks for looking out for me, I won’t forget it. Keep in touch if you hear anything else, yeah?’
‘Course, mate, course. No worries. I’ll see you round.’ He slaps Will between the shoulders and Will nudges forward a step. The man walks back to his machine, stuffs his clothes into a bin liner and leaves. He gives Will one last nod from the door.
Will looks at me and shrugs his shoulders.
‘What was that about tree-huggers?’ I ask.
‘Nothing I’m involved in and nothing you need to worry about. Like I told you, I’ve got it covered.’ He sits next to me and digs a finger into my ribs and wiggles it around. ‘Think I’ve found a new name for you. Big Ears.’ I cover my mouth to suppress the snort, but a giggle bursts through before I can swallow it. He tickles me again and we both laugh. My cheek muscles creak. Faces turn to watch. I pull away from Will, straight-faced, and he lays his hands on his knees. We sit in silence for a few moments.
‘As long as you’re safe,’ I say.
Will coughs and looks like he’s about to say something, but he doesn’t. He sits next to me for a few moments, his leg vibrating up and down, and I stare at him, waiting. Then he jumps up and says, ‘Righto, better get the wash on then?’
He puts the duvet into one of the bigger washers and rattles about with the broken change machine, then decides to go to the shop next door for coins. A customer has parked her baby’s buggy close to me in a dark corner. The little boy is sleeping, and his bare legs loll over the sides of the seat. His cheeks are fat and shiny like he’s eaten butter and smeared it over his face, and he looks soft in his sleepy sweat, lulled by the drone of the machines and the warmth of the dryers whose drums puff a mist of cotton into the air. The child’s romper suit creases and un-creases with each small breath he takes. This is what it must be like to be a mother, to be watching always, aware of the nano-distance between life and death; a breath or no breath. I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes, daring to touch in and out of small waves of sleep, and I revisit a dream I had last night.
I dreamt of a bog – a big, deep, rotting bog.
In the dream I’ve bought a house on a new suburban estate. A circular drive connects all the homes. It’s not the kind of place I would choose to live, but it’s safe and happy – ordered – a place for goodness and new beginnings. Like I’ve come home. Outside a ground-floor window is a small decked area surrounded by a balustrade, and immediately on the other side of this deck is the bog. At its edge a crust curves round to form a lip which nudges the turf very gently. With the smallest rainfall the level will rise and the thick black silage will seep into the house and ruin the carpet and all our things. Even though I can’t see below the lake’s surface, I know objects are trapped and rotting underneath. The liquid ripples and a woman climbs out. She comes to me with open arms, but she’s too filthy to hug. She whispers in my ear that the limbs of children have been thrown in the lake, and I need to get them out because they belong to me.
I’m startled from my half-sleep by Will coughing in front of me with two styrofoam cups of coffee. I take a moment to regroup, the edges of the dream still with me.
‘The caff was really busy.’ He looks flustered. ‘I had to queue and it took ages. I got us a takeout.’ He sits next to me and hands me a cup. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’
‘Thanks.’ I sit up in my seat and wipe a spit dribble from the corner of my mouth. ‘I wasn’t sleeping, just resting my eyes.’
The room has emptied and only a couple of customers are left: a man folds large grey underwear on the bench, plus the mother and her baby are still here. The woman stands b
y the window talking quietly on her phone. It’s darker than before with the sun now behind a cloud, and the dim light is a blanket over the outside world. For the first time in for ever, I am with someone and in something I don’t want to end.
Will and I take sips of the hot milky liquid, pressing the squeaky lids back on afterwards. He taps his knee. Leaning forward, he picks up a toy which has rolled off the buggy. First he places it on the hood of the pram, then changes his mind and puts it gently next to the little hand. The mother, still talking on her phone, watches with sideways eyes. Will nods at her and puts a finger to his mouth in a silent shush, then sits back in his seat with a wide smile. I lean over and press my shoulder to his. He is warm. I bend my head across to him and our hair touches. He puts a hand on mine. I turn my palm upwards. Where my wedding ring used to be, the skin is pinched and sunken. We interlock fingers. I smile.
‘It’s OK, you know,’ he says.
‘What is?’
He puts his cup on the floor and, with his other hand, leans across and brushes hair from my face. ‘This.’
I shift up in my chair. ‘And what do you call this?’
He looks around the room. Outside, it’s started to drizzle.
‘Happiness,’ he replies.
Will’s hand is warm and I squeeze a bit tighter. The space between our palms disappears.
‘There are things about me you don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t deserve you to be so good to me. I’m not what you think.’
‘Try me.’
‘I wouldn’t know where to start. It’s complicated.’
‘Rachel, you can trust me.’
‘I want to but I don’t know how.’
In my bag my mobile rings. I pull my hand from Will’s to get the phone. David’s name flashes up on the screen and hot-wires me back to reality.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Will tries to grab the phone but it falls from my hand and spins on the floor. Parts of the casing scatter but the phone carries on ringing. The noise bounces from the walls like a siren, and wakes the baby. I put my cup on the chair and the coffee spills into a puddle on the seat. On my hands and knees, I gather the bits of the phone, reject the call then stand to leave.
The Liar’s Chair Page 13
