by Clay, Josie
Chapter 5
“Mind your back!” I shouted down to Quincy, unclenching my fist to allow a dead, waterlogged rose bush to plummet three storeys, landing with a cadaverous thump on the lawn. “Bombs away!” Dispatching another; this one I carefully aimed so it missed his busying body by inches.
“Oi!” he grinned up at me.
Reclining on the cushionless balcony sun lounger, I rolled a cigarette and texted Tove. 'How is Küsse today?'
I always like to establish the word for cunt in the mother tongue of my foreign lovers ...it had been too crude a question to ask Nancy.
'Küsse is feeling very nice, see you tonight? x'.
Tove lived on the Bemerton, a labyrinthine estate off the Caledonian Road. The atmosphere minatory as I nudged the bitch-mobile around the warren of cul-de-sacs and allocated parking. Thinking better of it, I parked on the Cally, fearing Fritz's paint job would attract unwanted attention.
I wandered into a courtyard of bald grass, hopelessly lost.
“Hey! Mini-me!”. A voice echoed from above. Glancing up, I briefly saw myself waving from a walkway. The vision dissolved and Tove’s features asserted themselves. Keeping an eye on her, I made my way up some piss-smelling stairs, crunching over broken glass and giving the prosthetic leg that languished across the penultimate step a wide berth.
Tove's flat was warm, the décor simple and utilitarian – brushed metal filing cabinets and scaffold board shelves clamped with spotlights. An entire wall in the living room given over to a photographic mural of a silver birch forest in the snow. Björk modulated the air like melodious icicles.
Tove in a grey polo neck, her fingers and thumbs glinting with chunky silver. She resembled a more resolved version of me – eugenically enhanced.
As we hugged, her white musk clung to me and we kissed awkwardly because we'd both looked away at the same time.
“I hope you actually eat meat” she said. “I forgot to ask”.
A dark stew bubbling on the stove with onions, garlic, dumplings and red cabbage. Over dinner , we discussed terms and conditions; she came with a codicil. Although she found me attractive and insisted on monogamy, she wasn't ready for a relationship and thought we should just have some fun and hang out. I put it to her this sounded to me like a relationship, a cooling off period could be decided upon. We ended up with consensus; we would do with each other for now ...if you can't love the one you love, etc.
The arrangement suited us well. We cooked and entertained friends (M8 said that Tove was me, having gone through some kind of distorting machine). We watched films in bed about dystopian futures. We picked around markets and went to the cinema.
Christmas was spent in front of the snowy silver birches on a sheepskin rug playing Scrabble and drinking hot toddies. Tove had a Christmas quality herself, like spiced mince pies on a cold and frosty morning.
Eventually, pining for the warmth of the sun, we took a holiday in Lanzarote, where she grew cool and distant, choosing to eat only fruit and huddle in bed shivering.
Although I was concerned, it was obvious she wanted to be by herself and most days I went to the beach alone, glad to escape the frigid atmosphere of the apartment. A Scottish couple befriended me, Dougie and Sue.
“Is she alright, your wee sister? She looks awful pale”. In the evenings, I drank beer with them.
On the last night, no longer able to sleep beside the stone effigy that was Tove. I was feeding coins into the telly for porn (it was either that or Lanzarote life). Her ‘phone, which she normally kept with her at all times, described a buzzing circle on the tiled floor. I wrestled with my conscience for a moment, but soon won.
'My burning desire awaits your touch, Godspeed'.
Scrolling down the message history, I discovered Tove and Sophie had been exchanging 'heat' throughout the holiday. Sophie's fire had reignited, melting my frozen facsimile. More than anything, I was jealous of Tove; her beloved had returned to the future.
Checking myself for damage, I concluded I was 'actually' OK, conceding that if I were her, I would have behaved identically. I understood. In fact, it gave me hope.
Nancy, I'm trying to make you a stranger but I can't, something of you is in me. Who is right? You are either an angel or a beast and so am I. Who is right? I hope you never feel lonely like I do, but I expect if you did, you'd put it in a box too, all tangled up with me. And one day, when you are searching for a paper clip or a memory, you'll find me and examine me in your hand, your boy – but altered.
No sooner had I put the key in the ignition, I spotted a familiar frame shambling along North Church Road. Opening each gate and approaching each front door before retracing his steps, conscientiously shutting the gate behind him, as if locked in some compulsive ritual. His baseball cap sailing along a tall yew hedge some doors down and emerging onto the street again, whey faced and poker eyed. With no time to move the bitch-mobile, I darted back to the Cohen's front door and turned the sturdy Banham lock. Shutting the door behind me, I crouched beside the letterbox, which, some 30 seconds later, rattled at my head. A garish leaflet skidded over the parquet and I plucked it up.
'Pisa Pizza! 2 for 1 special deal!'
I had just seen the dead body of my enemy float by.
Chapter 6
The house at 12 Palladian Road was dark except for a light in the top window, as Frances Harriet Hooley and I strolled back to mine after my birthday dinner in a Turkish restaurant on Upper Street.
We'd guffawed at the menu, each dish described in shapes. I'd selected cubes of chicken while she'd plumped for cylinders of lamb. Continuing the theme all evening, we drank several elliptical margaritas with segments of lime and quibbled over the little triangular pastries; were they scalene or isosceles? The moon, pretty much spherical, as we lurched into The Limes.
Frances and I now friends, agreeing in retrospect that's what we should have been all along.
“Happy birthday Minnow” she said, presenting me with a spangly paper bag, which she'd been withholding all evening, very much one for delayed gratification. My hand fell on a book.
'Floral Language – what plants tell us'.
“Thanks F”, planting a kiss on her cheek.
“There's more” she said, nodding at the bag.
“Bottle shaped ...uh oh, you know this stuff makes me nuts”. Tequila complete with worm.
“I know” she said, “it's funny, go on, have some. I want to see you turn into an arse”.
“I am an arse” I said, fetching two shot glasses.
“An even bigger arse then” she giggled and we downed a shot.
“I'd like to listen to Erik Satie” I announced pompously.
“See” she said, “it's happening already”.
We'd been squiffy when we left the restaurant and now I felt the onset of omnipotence as I necked another tequila.
“Better go” Frances said, “I'm in court tomorrow”. Frances was a barrister ...cute in the wig.
Loneliness settling on me like a shroud as I considered the contents of the Nancy tin. Ironic wasn't it, how she'd enabled me to buy a flat; I couldn't have done it without her. This was my home, my refuge, and yet she'd evicted me. So here I was, in my home, homeless. There was a roof but no floor.
Pouring another glass, I took up 'Floral Language'. Starting at the back, glossing over Zinnia and Yarrow, I stopped at W.
'Wisteria speaks of honour, memory, patience, endurance, creative expansion, the duality of love, victory over hardship. Wisterias can flourish even when mistreated, although the Victorians warned of a clinging love and an obsession as choking as the vine. Wisteria are long lived and grow quickly. Discipline is needed to prevent the plant from spiraling out of control. They have been known to destroy brick walls and even buildings.'
I imagined 12 Palladian Road, razed to rubble by a rampaging Japanese monster vine.
I dreamed I was outside Nancy's house, floating around the Saab. It was dark and drizzling but the street light had
kissed the beaded droplets into jewels on the purple paintwork. The house crouched, self-satisfied, mocking me ...smug. I anti-gravitated to the bedroom window but its eyes were drawn with heavy lined hessian and I was forced to picture Nancy sleeping, oblivious to me and the husband beside her.
Then in the kitchen, gliding above the floor because it was covered in Cheerios. Whoops-a-daisy who's done that? Hah! There was dust on the cooker hood. Finding myself in the garden on my knees, scraping purposefully at the muddy ground, scooping up great clods with my JCB hands. A wet wind froze the back of my head and trickled down my neck and I lay down on the deck unable to carry on, the rain prickling my eyelids ...so cold. This must be death and in the morning Nancy would find me – a gonner. Clasping me to her bosom, she would cry hot salt into my face.
Dragging baggage ...always baggage, weighing me down. Spiriting myself through the empty, soaking streets, my shadow misshapen, yawning and shrinking between street light intervals. An Hasidic man talking to me, a white plastic bag puffing on his head, keeping his hat dry.
“But I am unclean” I rasped, in a strange, prankster voice. “Don't you know I am goy?” Giggling, I hovered home.
An infernal machine chugging in my skull and my eyes stitched shut. I'm dead after all and buried in the frozen earth, or perhaps at sea because icy water is fluxing about me, stopping and unstopping my ears. Now the thud of my heart, now the drip of a tap. A weight on my chest so great it threatens to snap my ribcage to kindling ...I sat up ghoulishly (as they say one does when being cremated), sending a roll of water away from me only for it to return, riding about my waist.
One of my gummed eyes peeled open to witness a strand of green bile bungeeing from my mouth into the bath of putrid soup, cubes of partially digested chicken discernible in the brown, sloshing rancour. Shivering, inching an arm and leg over the side and hauling myself out, I collapsed on the bathroom floor, dragging a towel from the radiator over me. For a while, I lay aborted, unviable and tried to work out what had happened. At the same time not wanting clarity. My clenched fists before my face, muddy fingernails and raw skin held clues. Exploiting a window of relative balance, I pulled myself up on the side of the bath and felt my way to the sink. The monster in the mirror was blue and swollen, its eyes bloodshot, matted hair garnished with filth. My neck and shoulders screamed and my brain pan clanged spitefully as I stooped to drink from the tap. Sinking to all fours again, I crawled into the hallway where an empty bottle of tequila and body sized smear of mud confronted me.
Something bolted across my eyes like a jumbo jet, trailing flames and my heart stepped back as if the guilty party.
“Oh no, no, no, no...please”. On all fours, spattering tears on the floorboards. I continued the crawl of shame into the bed/living room, where the contents of the Nancy tin were strewn, amid vomit and mud, leading like a path to a bedraggled , cringing creature, its caked bottom the source of the soiling, its coiling tendrils wilting woefully.
'Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you ...The wisteria!'
As soon as I was well enough, I manhandled the plant into a wheelie-bin outside the flats, narrowing my eyes as a police car Doppler shifted past. The ‘phone ringing when I came back and seized by paranoia, I watched it furtively for a while before snatching it up to face the music.
“Hello, Margaret Thatcher!”
“Oh, hello Insane in the Membrane”.
After relaying the whole sorry business, there was a silence into which I poured a diatribe of self loathing, concluding : “I'm sorry I've let us down M8. Are you ashamed of me?”
A deep sigh . “No M8, not at all. It was an act of impotence and rage. Bless your poor old head”.
“I can't spin this one M8”.
“You have already”.
“How?”
“Look, Nancy is now filed right next to a shameful and humiliating act. Hopefully, this will be your abiding association. You don't want to think of the act, ergo you can't think of Nancy. You've liberated yourself”.
“Thanks M8”.
There was logic in this, but what really gnawed at me was what Nancy's abiding association would be. I was a stupid bitch, just as my mother had always said. Unfolding the corkscrew attachment on my Swiss army knife, I punctured the skin on my right thigh nine times and twice on my left.
When I got home the following evening, a single tendril waved from underneath the bags of rubbish heaped upon it. Scaling the low brick wall, I hooked the bags out and hauled the ailing plant to safety.
“You don't deserve to die for my sins” I told it, carrying it in my arms like a fallen comrade. I set it in a pot on my balcony and after dressing it in fresh peat, I amputated its damaged extremities to give it a fighting chance.
During the following months, I gave Palladian Road a wide berth. Once, Nancy and I had passed each other in the car and she'd stared ahead, her hands firmly gripping the steering wheel. My heart still drummed for her.
That night I dreamed of her. Inside 12 Palladian Road, no glass in the windows and the curtains snapping raggedly in the wind. There were children sounds upstairs and I was panic stricken in case she came home and found me. From the window, the garden loomed like a derelict stage set: the deck rotted, the fencing sagged and the grass a mud patch. The ratchet of the Saab's handbrake. I tried to flee, but was rooted. Trying to concoct a plausible reason for my trespass, I scanned the room for a hiding place, but it was too late. Keys jingled as she stooped to pick up the mail, walking past me, studying the envelopes, her heels tick-tocking on the floorboards.
'She can't see me' I thought wildly. But then placing the letters on the table, she lifted her eyes to mine. The fear in me hot and palpable as she approached with a strange, sincere expression, reining something in, like exasperation, brushing my flaming forehead with the back of her hand as if testing for a temperature. She parted my lips with her fingers and opening my mouth, pressed something on my tongue. She pushed my chin up and my teeth met with a clap. The thing in my mouth, metallic - the Russian wedding ring. Eyes burning into mine. 'Now shut up' they said. 'Enough'.
I woke up with the sour memory of three types of gold.
Chapter 7
Quincy and I were full of cold, having to stop every few minutes to blow our noses. We had given up on 'Bless yous' yesterday.
“Quince, please don't overfill the rubble sacks”.
“I'm sorry, guv” he said. “I think I've had it ...I feel so rough”.
“OK, go home” I said. “I'll finish up”.
“Are you sure?”.
“Yes, fuck off”.
“OK, darlin” he said, “I'll see you Monday”.
He went, trumpeting his exit into a hanky. Men, big and strong, but still such babies. Squatting, I hugged a rubble sack to my body, stood and waddled at top speed down the side passage to the skip. Normally I'd turn out the bags for re-use, not this time, pushing in the dusty crap. Getting dark now, two hours since Quincy had left and mercifully down to the last five bags – the ones he'd filled. The penultimate load particularly nose-bleeding and I felt it slipping, so I stopped, squatted and re-hugged. A phlegmy rattle bothered my lungs as I tilted myself at the skip and began to run as if tossing the caber. At that point, a huge, rasping cough barked up from my ribs, pole - axing me and I felt something inside me pop. The job done, I sat in Fritz, rubbing the xylophone beneath my right breast uneasily.
That evening, I drove to Tove's, sisters once more (Sophie had iced again). In bed, we cuddled, intimate but platonic. Come the morning I couldn't move, barely able to breathe, panting in shallow gasps with a pain so searing I could see and hear it – silver, white stabbing chords, as if being run through by Norman Bates.
Tove took me to the Homerton where I was diagnosed with three broken ribs. They gave me gorilla sedatives and said I should rest for six weeks. No chance of that.
Despite the caution on the bottle, I drove home in rictus, trying not to cough or sneeze because there lay a world of pain.
Trembling fingers tearing at the poo-inducing brown envelope marked 'Inland Revenue' that a thoughtful neighbour had pushed under my door. Apparently my liability was £8,000 ...I'd just about had enough and decided a trip to UK Polski Sklep was in order. A post Sabbath evening and I juddered amongst the Hasids with no fear of being bumped. Perusing the misty chest freezer, aware an unorthodox situation had arisen. An elderly Hasidic man, pressing himself against me.
“You vant to be my friend?” he mumbled, nostrils whistling laboriously or perhaps excitedly, it was hard to tell. I studied the fish fingers I'd selected for calorific information and he stared at them too as if they held an answer.
