by Kitty Wilson
And truth is I have quite enjoyed myself. I mean I’m not going to turn the lights on now and sit with the tree all lit up whilst I’m by myself but it has been nice, going out and picking out things that I think Belle will like, that I think may put the smile on her face that makes everything in her shine.
The smile I’m picturing in my head is a different smile to the polite one she flashes at people, to the polite one she usually flashes at me. The one where she’s truly happy and comfortable is one I’ve seen far more rarely, really only around Luisa and Marsha, or the night she saw how genuinely interested I am in her Shakespeare project.
When that smile is on her face she radiates, the happiness shines out of her, capable of melting the frostiest day. There’s something transformative about it; not only does it transform her face and the way she holds her body but it transforms those whom it is bestowed upon, the warmth of it lasting long after its first flash. It could easily become addictive.
It’s becoming more frequent as she relaxes into being around me. She had it on when she caught my eye the other day whilst we ate salt-dough. And it had been glowing from her, bright as a beacon, as we had raced down that hill on those rickety old trays, as she and Marsha had clung to each other and shrieked with laughter as they hurtled down, her face occasionally turning back to mine to see if I was enjoying myself as much as they were. And I was. I really was. It had been liberating, that adrenaline rush of letting the this-is-stupid-maybe-we-shouldn’t feeling be overwhelmed by the we’re-doing-this-and-it-feels-amazing rush, a feeling I haven’t had, haven’t allowed myself to have, in a long time.
I have a feeling Belle Wilde is teaching me lessons that could be very good for me. And I feel safe with her – well, obviously not physically, as the sledging testified to, but emotionally, which is far more important to me at the moment. The safety comes through knowing that she is deliberately avoiding romance to concentrate on her work, that there is no risk of mixed messages or misread symbols. She is safe and happy with friendship and nothing else. I could, if I was of the mind to – which I Very Definitely Am Not – wave red roses or engagement rings or even my boxer shorts at her and be met with nothing other than a tut and firm request to sod the hell off. She will never have any idea of how grateful I am to her for that. The pressure is off, I don’t have to worry about what she may be thinking and she doesn’t have to worry about me hitting on her. And in her company I feel more relaxed than I have for years.
I need to repay that somehow. I figure after the hecticness of this week that her shininess might be waning. If I can help her feel a glimmer of pleasure through the exhaustion, then that I will do.
I’m aware, now, that socialising isn’t always an easy thing for Belle. She’s been honest enough to say as much, that the outgoing social persona she had at university was fuelled by stimulants rather than by her being naturally comfortable around people. Her ability to interact or enjoy herself fully without social anxiety is limited; she worries about every little thing she’s said or done. What’s been left unsaid is that it comes from a place of not feeling good enough, that she isn’t good enough.
I can remember that feeling. I had it when I first started university, surrounded by all the rich kids. The kids, like Belle, that I had assumed had everything gifted to them on a silver platter. The students whose mums hadn’t had to clean four different houses a day to put food on the table, who hadn’t skipped meals when the rent was due. The students who could tell from a glance that I was poor, that I didn’t have the right clothes, that my laptop had been bought refurbished from eBay rather than brand new from the Apple store.
I had grown out of it quickly though, as it hadn’t taken long to realise that with my mother – and then later with Dave and my mum – I had grown up richer than most of those children with their Antibes holidays and designer clothing. I had been loved and nurtured and encouraged. And, as yesterday had proved, still am.
When I think about Belle and how she scared me then, intimidated me and yet compelled me, and when I think about her now and that lunch I witnessed at the Wilde house, her adolescent behaviour is no surprise, textbook in fact. A child constantly ignored or put down by parents grows up not feeling good enough, turns to substances to mask feelings of inadequacy. Not that she has ever blamed her parents for that in my hearing; she takes full responsibility for all of her decisions. That evening with Luisa, she didn’t hesitate to admit it was her who cocked up all the time, none of the blame-shifting she could easily have done.
I can’t help but admire her for that. In fact, the more time I spend with her the more I realise there is a complexity to her I may have guessed at before, but never fully understood. When I was younger, categorising people and putting them in boxes made me feel better, more in control, superior even. I realise now that it wasn’t just unkind but unfair, misrepresentative. It did both them and me a disservice.
I realise I’m just standing staring mindlessly in the fridge as I have damascene moment after damascene moment, but I can’t help where my thoughts are taking me. That’s a lie; I can. I’m good at control. That I’m A-star in, medal-winning. I don’t want to control where my thoughts are, not right now.
I’m enjoying thinking of Belle, I’ve been enjoying thinking about Belle. I enjoy doing things for her, repaying the kindnesses she has shown me since I turned up at her parents’ house.
I pull a bottle of beer and the leftovers of last night’s takeaway with it out of the fridge and shut the door. If I were in Oz now I wouldn’t be drinking mid-week but I’m having some difficulty sleeping over here, with replays of that last argument with Jess going over again and again and again in my head. Mum’s words about it not being my fault were too simplistic. I can’t help but think how I should have behaved differently, how I should have recognised that I was an irritant and changed myself accordingly, how I should have kept my cool. As the thoughts throttle through my mind I hear that bloody Christmas album on repeat, providing the background noise to the scene as it played out. The Christmas tree lights flickering in the corner of my eye as my speech, Jessica’s speech, became more and more disjointed, emotional, fractured.
I take a deep breath, place the food and the drink on the work-surface and pull open the drawer to grab the bottle opener. With a swift jerk, I have the cap off the bottle and the glass to my lips. I drink deeply.
I’m thankful, I guess, that it’s only at night that my demons resurface, that in the daytime I’m normally able to carry on as usual. It had been my fear that I would be triggered the minute I landed back in Bristol, especially in winter with all the seasonal celebrations blaring out of every building, through the high streets and the villages. That I would be paralysed, unable to support Mum and Dave, contribute in any way.
I had been scared that every blonde woman I saw wrapped up in a camel wool coat would jolt me, shake me and trigger flashbacks to that night. Of me shouting, raging even. The only time in my life I have ever lost my temper like that. Flashbacks of the drive to the hospital, Dave’s face set and grim, Mum sat next to me in the back as if I were a child again, stroking my arm as I stared forward, dreading what was coming. I didn’t need telling, I knew. I could feel it.
Another glug of beer.
But it hasn’t been too bad, coming home at Christmas time. It isn’t that the demons haven’t come haring back, tracking me down. They have, especially that first day or two; as I landed, as Mum and Dave tried to make everything normal, as I escaped back here to my Bath-based cocoon every night so I wouldn’t hear the sounds of the city, just a city.
But the month has progressed and it’s no longer every night that I lie awake, staring up at the ceiling, beating myself up as the memories come flashing back. If I’m entirely honest, the days I spend with Belle are the ones when I get into my bed and fall asleep almost immediately, and I know I’m guilty of seeking out her company because of it. I am using her as a kind of therapy, a survival method to get me through. And her well-i
ntentioned plan to get me to love Christmas may not make me love this season, but it is helping in a way. As I look around my flat and see all I have done to try and make Belle smile tomorrow evening, I know I am creating new Christmas memories, frequently daft ones that make me feel something very close to happy.
Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.
* * *
December Seventeenth.
Rory.
The rain is hitting hard and fast, and the city’s lights – of which there are bloody hundreds – are all blurry and jagging as it hurtles down in the dark evening sky. Little stingy spikes of rain jabbing at you, targeting every part, making everyone hurry as fast as they can to their next destination. Back in Australia, people will be firing up barbecues right now, with hand-held fans and suntan lotion crammed into their overstuffed beach bags.
I watch Belle come out of the shop, laughing with her colleagues as they pull their coats and their scarfs tighter, their hats down on their heads, and all saying goodnight as the manager turns the key in the lock before they turn and speed walk to safety.
‘Hey,’ I call, and her head bobs up. When she spots me her mouth turns upwards. The smile polite but genuine all the same.
‘Hello. I was just about to walk to yours.’
‘Here, get under the umbrella.’ I wave it towards her, opening my own head up to the sharp, cold drops. ‘You can’t walk in this, and besides, you know what a warren this city is. It made way more sense to pick you up.’
She looks tired, and I’m not surprised. I remember back to the start of this month – hard to believe it was only a couple of weeks ago – when I thought that Belle had grown up to be an underachieving stoner. Now I know she is one of the hardest workers I have ever known. She has dark circles under her eyes and even the brightness of her smile is not enough to fool me now I know her. Running three jobs this week would be enough to kill anyone; it’s a miracle she’s still standing.
She ducks under the umbrella and sends me a little smile of gratitude and for a second, I wish we were walking home, the two of us in this small space protecting us from the elements as they attack, just me and her as I lead her to safety. God knows what that says about me. Ever needing to be the bloody hero. Instead I walk her around to the passenger side door, and open it for her.
Whilst the work ethic is all her own, I feel a little bit responsible for the crazy effort she is demonstrating at the moment. If Jamal had come through then she’d be doing the school stuff, working with app developers, and wouldn’t have to be killing herself to make the rent. I still haven’t got to the bottom of what had happened but I have scheduled in time to catch up with him over Christmas when he’ll be back in the city again for a few days.
‘I’m not used to this,’ she says.
‘What? Being treated like a human being?’
‘Nah, I’m fairly sure human beings just have to get on with stuff, you know, get wet in the rain, open their own car doors. This is being treated like royalty.’
‘Behave! I’m just not letting you touch the car cos you’d have the handle in your hand and a helpless look of confusion on your face if I did,’ I say before I shut the door on her and walk around to the driver’s side, shaking the umbrella out before I put it in the back.
‘True,’ she says turning to face me as I get in and turn the engine on. ‘Although I am behaving. For example, I haven’t teased you about your non-existent lights phobia. You’re parked in front of the glitteriest most light-flashy shop in the whole city right now and seem perfectly fine.’
‘How dare you suggest my phobia is made up.’ I laugh as the car purrs out of town, up the hill and towards the flat. She doesn’t know yet that not only have I been outside the shop this evening, I was also inside it earlier in the week.
‘Oh, I dare. And lights in the rain are fab. Squint and then shake your head, it’s so much fun. You should try it.’
‘You want me to drive the car, squint my eyes and see if I can make things look trippy as I drive?’ I say. ‘I’m willing to try new stuff but I think careering down that hill the other day on something that looks like it was stolen from a school dining room in the Fifties is probably my limit. I’m going to keep these bad boys fully open until we get ourselves to the flat.’ She laughs but it’s clear her energy is not full Belle.
‘You look shattered, do you want me to run you home so you can go straight to bed?’ I offer.
‘Tempting, so very tempting, but you promised me free food and a Christmas movie. I reckon I can last a little bit longer.’
‘Okay, but if at any point you hit a wall and need to get home super quick then say and I’ll take you straight back. Here we are.’
Belle’s face is a picture as she looks up at the Georgian townhouse.
‘It’s so beautiful, you’re lucky to live here.’
‘Renting for the month and only a flat, not the whole thing. But yes, it’s pretty special.’ I understand her wonder. Child me could never have dreamt of renting somewhere like this. Somewhere that sums up the affluence and the history of this city as perfectly as the housing in the centre of Bath does. It was Jessica who had helped me expand what was usual for me, embrace the more chi-chi elements our success brought.
‘Can you imagine the sights this building has seen? Jane Austen herself could have stayed here, or nipped in to have tea before taking the waters.’
‘I imagine if she had, there would be a blue plaque and the rent would be twice the price. Here.’ I dash around the side of the car to open the door for her, umbrella aloft.
I hold out my hand to help her up. She looks at me as if I am mad and then decides to play along and takes it.
The touch of her hand in mine sends my head into a tailspin and I call on all my years of self-control not to make it look as if thirty thousand volts are racing up my arm at her mere touch. What is this? It certainly isn’t how my friendship with Belle is meant to feel. Part of me wants to drop her hand and part of me wants to act as normally as humanly possible. Dropping her hand would imply things. This isn’t some budding romance, I’m not an adolescent boy, this is me thanking a friend who’s making my stay back in the UK far more bearable. I’m not going to indulge my brain with any other scenarios. I’ll be back halfway across the world in no time, two weeks to the day, and then I probably won’t ever see her again.
When we were dancing at Tyntesfield I had had a similar reaction but assumed that it was because it had been a long time since I had held a woman’s hand, and my body was getting confused. But this is twice now. That excuse can’t play twice, can it? Yes, it can, I tell myself. It’s been years, to be fair, and you’re not the most tactile guy. This is just friendship, the fear of anything more is nothing but your anxieties coming to the fore, the perpetual fear that you are being unfair to Jess. I keep rationalising, reassuring myself, and she keeps hold of my hand.
‘I’m going to play Georgian heroine this evening,’ she explains, bobbing a curtsey once I’ve locked the car, led her up the steps and let us both into the dry.
I shut the door with my back and still holding her hand twirl her around the tiled floor of the hallway. We’re getting good at this dancing thing.
‘It seems to me, madam, that you are very fond of playing the historical heroine, as this is the second time you’ve done it in a week,’ I say, relieved that a sense of normalcy has returned to my body and that my voice isn’t giving my momentary doubts away.
‘This is true, it is my one natural calling,’ she acknowledges. ‘It seems a shame to rob you of the chance to do the same. I know deep down you really want to be a villain.’
‘I do, I do,’ I say, twirling an imaginary but very villainous moustache. ‘Welcome to my lair.’ I unlock and throw open the flat door and usher her in with a particularly nefarious sweep. ‘Do come into my parlour.’
‘My mother has warned me about men like you,’ she says, picking her feet up daintily and role-playing her way into the flat
.
‘And yet still you came in.’
‘I did. Like a fly to a spider’s den,’ she says with a big grin and then she stops short as she takes in the scene in front of her. ‘What’s this?’
‘This, madam, is your carefully curated sofa spot. Let me lead the way.’
I have worked quite hard. I put up a Christmas tree in the window and have decorated it with sparkling white lights and baubles I bought from her shop. I tried to get some of the ones she had talked about. The ones she said she had fallen in love with but openly admitted she couldn’t justify buying. I plan to gift both the tree and baubles to her when the evening is out, because although she’s certainly making my December a lot more fun, I still feel no need to have a permanent flashing reminder of the season in my home, not even my temporary one.
I lead her to the sofa, two snowflake cushions one end and two blankets neatly folded at the other, one silky smooth and the other so fluffy that it’s a miracle it’s not mewing. There’s a small table to the side where I’ve popped the remote control for her and a small bowl of nuts to snack on.
The room does look pretty and I have pinched one of Mum’s millions of scented candles, one designed to smell of Christmas – pine, clementines and eucalyptus. To me it smells like loo cleaner but I hope that the scent wafting through the room will please Belle. It certainly sent my mum into a paroxysm of joy when I asked if I could pinch it.
‘I knew you’d be shattered after your insane work week so I’ve made you a Christmas nest from where you can eat your Christmas dinner…’ She looks at me with wide eyes. ‘Yep, it’s just a roast really but with pigs in blankets and a couple of extra bits. Don’t get excited, I can’t compete with your dad,’ I say and shrug my shoulders.
