Between the Regions of Kindness

by Alice Jolly

  I’ll tell Jay you came around, she says.

  Thank you but – you see, I was going to…

  Listen. Sorry – I’ve got a flight to catch.

  Yes, of course. Sorry. It’s just – you don’t know where he is?

  No, I just said. I don’t know where he is. I’ll give him the message. Goodbye. Lara shuts the door on those brimming eyes. Only half an hour until the car will be here and she still hasn’t finished her make-up, found her suit, brushed her hair. This is her project, everything must be right. She needs to make it impossible for Craig not to promote her. She hurries back upstairs, grabs her personal organiser and her keys from the hall table and stuffs them into her bag. The movement stretches the cracked skin of her knuckles and she winces. Where is Jay? How the hell should I know? He’s twenty, after all. It isn’t my business to know his every move.

  Lara applies a thick layer of eczema cream to her hands, then opens her wardrobe. Again, she hears that low mournful melody. Where can it be coming from? She’s only going to be in Barcelona for two days but there’s a dinner this evening. Her aubergine-coloured wraparound dress needs flesh-coloured tights to go with it. Darkest Nude by Wolford – she doesn’t have a pair. The last ones laddered three weeks ago so why in God’s name hasn’t she bought some new ones? She pushes a substitute pair into the bag although they’re the wrong colour and will ruin the look of the dress, make her calves look fat. Everything must be right but already her plans are unravelling.

  When was the last time she saw Jay? Sometime early last week? Of course, he’s keeping out of her way. Perhaps she had been too harsh but what was she to do? Stand by and watch him throw away every opportunity? Somebody had to say it. She takes several deep breaths. Of course, the man is just a random lunatic. Low lifes, deadbeats, benefit cheats and superannuated hippies. Brighton is full of them. She stretches out her hand and yanks the curtain shut.

  She needs to finish doing her face and find the beads she usually wears with the aubergine dress but instead she crosses the corridor to Jay’s room. The curtains are drawn and the smell is incense, trainers and bicycle tyres. She picks her way across the room and pulls aside the skull-and-crossbones flag that covers the window. Light falls on a half-dismantled bicycle standing on a dust sheet surrounded by nuts, bolts, a bicycle pump, a spanner. The ceiling of the room is painted black, and books, CDs and videos are crammed onto shelves made out of wine crates. A portable television is suspended from a piece of twisted metal poking down from the ceiling. On the wall is a picture of Che Guevara, a board full of photographs and postcards. The words – For evil to triumph it only requires that good men should do nothing – are scrawled in black marker pen across a Stop The War poster. A globe hangs from the ceiling draped with a bicycle chain. It symbolises the world in chains, of course, doesn’t it? A book about conscientious objectors in the Second World War lies on the desk. Next to it, a pile of brand new philosophy textbooks. Lara had bought them for his course and they had cost over a hundred pounds. Now she thinks, Perhaps I should make him pay the money back?

  She opens one of the drawers of Jay’s desk. Two years ago, after he was taken to the psychiatric hospital, people had said, Didn’t you know? Didn’t you see any signs? She knew what they thought: single mother, spends too much time at work, neglects her child. Of course, she had known that he was depressed and she’d tried to understand – but she couldn’t help but feel angry and she still feels angry now. Because he’s tried to do it once, she worries endlessly that he’ll try again. A subtle form of blackmail, but infinitely powerful. He’s determined to make her responsible. Except that he’s better now, or at least he’s swapped one form of oddness for another. Still, she should have tried to ring him over the weekend, just to check, but she was at work from nine in the morning until gone ten at night both days. He hadn’t come back last night but that didn’t mean anything. Often he stayed with his grandparents at the Guest House, just half a mile away.

  Lara stops now for a moment beside the chest of drawers and the model of Big Ben. They had made that together, one rainy afternoon, out of cereal boxes. Jay had worked so hard at that, sticking paper on and painting. But he had cried when the pinnacle kept falling off. It is crooked again now. Suddenly Lara longs to hold him, to feel him, to help him stick the pinnacle straight and cuddle the tears away. She moves away before tears can ambush her, picks up a folder that lies on the desk. The truth is that she sometimes feels a mild nostalgia for Jay’s years of depression. Of the various Jays she’s lived with, Depressed Jay was perhaps the easiest to manage. A photograph drops from the folder onto the desk. It shows forearms and hands with the palms turned upwards. The arms are covered with crooked strips of lint secured by plasters. The lint is stained with patches of blood. Lara knows these photographs. Jay takes them at the hospital, where he works as a volunteer. He has hundreds of photographs like this – bald heads, emaciated limbs, stitched wounds, bedsores and close-up shots of IV lines. But this particular photograph – with those ragged bits of lint – doesn’t look as though it was taken at the hospital. Lara’s stomach clenches and she shoves the photograph back into the folder.

  Beside it, there are piles of paper, printed off the internet. They’re all about the effects of the sanctions, Hans Blix and the UN, the need for a Second Resolution, weapons of mass destruction. Yes, this is the latest thing. Since Jay came back from college he’s spent most of his time in the Community Centre. That’s where the protesters meet, in a cellar room, next to his grandmother’s Guest House, at the back of the Church of the Good Shepherd. Making banners, writing letters, planning demonstrations and vigils. All very well, Lara thinks, if you haven’t got a living to earn. On the noticeboard above the desk a leaflet about fair trade is fixed by a magnet. A yellow Post-it note is stuck on the magnet with a scribbled name – Oliver Stanmore.

  Turning to the bed, Lara finds a plastic folder that contains a leaflet about the Christian Solidarity Movement. A photograph on the cover shows a man kneeling in front of a soldier who points a gun at him. Another report gives information about teams of Christian peacemakers in Palestine who stand in front of buildings that are about to be demolished. Lara puts the leaflet down. She’s heard something about that over the last few days. Human shields, wasn’t it? On the mantelpiece is a flattened box containing strips of cellophane, curled tinfoil. Jay’s medication. He does appear to have taken this pack, at least. But still Lara isn’t sure. He’s quite capable of dropping the pills down a drain.

  She hears his voice – Mum, I just want to be able to be close to you. He seems to have the idea that there’s some other person inside her, the person she really is, someone who is into yoga and vegetarian cooking and world peace. And he seems to think that it’s his duty to reveal that hidden person. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that there is no hidden person, only her, just as she is. A single mum of thirty-eight, living in Brighton, who smokes, shops and drinks too much red wine. A woman who works as an interior designer, has an on-off affair with her boss and loves to watch bad crime programmes on television. But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to be close to him. She has also wanted that and often, together, they have achieved that, haven’t they? Perhaps only sometimes, occasionally.

  Mum, I just want our lives to be real. What does he know about real? When Lara was not much older than Jay is now, she lived on thirty pounds a week, in one room, with a screaming baby – him. Real is to be avoided at all costs. Lara pushes the papers back into the desk. Of course, her parents will probably know where Jay is. Now there’s no childcare to be arranged, Lara keeps out of their way, but Jay spends half of his life at the Guest House. But if she calls, she knows what Mollie will say. First something irrelevant such as – If these young people had lived through the Coventry Blitz then they’d understand what war really is. After that she’ll insist she knows nothing so emphatically that Lara will feel sure she’s lying. Then she will become dramatic – Shall we call the police? Have you run
g the lifeboat station?

  Lara picks up an envelope from the desk and finds a receipt for traveller’s cheques. Two thousand pounds. She feels a feverish shiver pass across her skin. She puts the papers down and picks them up again. Where could Jay have got that kind of money? She knows, of course. Mollie doesn’t have any money herself but that has never stopped her indulging Jay. But two thousand pounds? She remembers now that Mollie did leave a message on Saturday. Lara, darling. You must call me, urgently. I need to speak to you now. But everything is always urgent with Mollie.

  Lara crosses the corridor, heads towards her office, stops. The copies of the proposal are climbing out of her bag. A glass of red wine hovers over a white rug. Buzz, crackle and the hard drive on the laptop expires. Her flight roars away from Gatwick and she has mysteriously failed to board it. How can she control all these things? Why do objects not stay where they are put – Jay included?

  Office, she was heading to the office. Oh yes, material swatches and samples of flooring. She probably won’t need those but, if the clients do want the details, then Craig will be furious if she can’t produce every last swatch of curtain lining. She’s worked so hard for this. She gathers the samples up and puts them on the desk, then picks up the phone and calls Mollie. She imagines her parents sitting in the basement kitchen of their tall town house, which was once the Windsor Guest House but has now subsided into housing-benefit bedsits. The phone will be lying on the floor, or lost under a pile of washing, and Mollie won’t even be able to hear it because she’ll be busy making tea and toast for one of her non-rent-paying tenants. Or Rufus will be ranting about the state of modern theatre. The phone rings on and on. Lara slams it down – how many times has she told her mother to get an answering machine? But then Mollie has problems remembering her age and even her own name, so what can one expect?

  Lara scrolls through the numbers on her mobile and calls Jay. She hears his disembodied voice – soft and scratchy, an unmasculine voice. Hi, this is Jay. I’m in orbit right now. I’ll call you back when I pass by planet earth. She should ring one of his friends but he doesn’t really have any friends, or not ones he’s allowed her to meet. In the Community Centre there are those two guys with improbable names – Spike and Wilf. Or was it Wolf? Anyway, Wilf-Wolf’s been living at the Guest House for the last few months and Jay has talked about him. And that dippy woman Martha who is old enough to know better.

  Lara gathers the sample boards up under her arm. She has prepared answers for every question that the clients might ask. As she walks down the stairs, she forces herself to move slowly because there’s no cause for panic. Breathe, remember to breathe. The lights flicker. It must be the storm, she thinks. And then the lights go on and off again and she stops still, hearing a sound at the door. Oh, she thinks, Jay is home. But the sound stops and she’s alone on the stairs, listening to the wind.

  The doorbell rings and Lara looks at her watch. It’s five to eight. She hurries down the stairs and asks the driver to wait. Then she runs back up, pulls on her suit and struggles to close her overnight bag. Her hand slips, her knuckles scrape against the zip and she feels the flesh tear. She hasn’t finished doing her make-up. Tallow on the walls, Pointing on the ceiling, she scribbles on a note to the builders. And make sure the jade tiles are ordered today. She underlines the words several times. Maybe she’ll be able to get some Darkest Nude tights in Barcelona.

  3

  NOW

  Jemmy – Brighton, January 2003

  Jemmy sits back from her desk, looks at her watch. Eleven thirty, only an hour now until lunch. That’s how the days are. Counting the time, waiting until the moment when you’ll do this, or go there. Except there isn’t any point in waiting. Around her phones ring. Hello, Tiffany speaking, how can I help you? Hello, Monica speaking, how can I help you? This is Jemmy’s first day back at work. Swift Life Investments, Insurance and Pensions were meant to give her three months off but because she’s employed on a contract they could only agree to six weeks. Still, it’s better to be back at work.

  Jemmy gets up and goes to get a coffee. Distant windows are streaked by dusty, January rain. As Jemmy heads back to her desk, plastic cup in hand, Tiffany pushes her chair back. As Jemmy dodges out of the way, she tries not to see Tiffany rubbing her hand over her vast bump. When is Tiffany’s baby due? Rona’s baby has probably already been born because she isn’t in the office, and judging by the pile of post in her tray, she hasn’t been in for a while. For a moment a black hole appears inside Jemmy’s head and she feels a sudden dizziness, like vertigo.

  Strangely the phones are quiet. That never happens on a Monday morning. And Mrs Jarvis, the Section Head, isn’t around either so people push their chairs away from their desks, stretch their heads back, roll their shoulders. At the next desk Tiffany turns to Monica. Killing me ribcage.

  Oh yeah it does, dun it?

  And yer back?

  Yeah. Monica has three children under five and is the office expert on all matters relating to babies. She has photographs of her children pinned up all over the board above her computer. Everyone has photographs like that – babies with stripy babygrows, babies propped in pushchairs under fleecy rugs, babies in the bath, bald babies with dummies in their mouths, babies playing with toy mobile phones.

  Tiffany and Monica start to look through a catalogue for pushchairs.

  Best to get one of those three-in-ones. Do you right through. Pram, Maxi-Cosi car seat, pushchair. How about that one? Not a bad price.

  Tiffany groans and rubs her bump.

  Sixty centimetres. You need to check that’ll go through your door.

  Yeah.

  Look at this way, love, you’ve only another three weeks. As soon as it gets to your date, get it induced. You don’t want to be hanging around, not in your state. That’s what Rona did, couldn’t stand it a day longer, can’t say I blame her. Oh look at that little Moses basket, isn’t it cute? Not very practical, though. The first load of sick down it.

  Jemmy can’t help but think that all this talk of pushchairs and Moses baskets is aimed at her. Aren’t Monica and Tiffany talking more loudly than usual? Don’t they turn their eyes towards her as soon as she looks away? The phone rings and Jemmy swivels back to her desk. Jemmy speaking, how may I help you? As she takes the call, she keeps an eye on the clock. Half an hour until lunch. But it’ll be exactly the same afterwards. Monica and Tiffany are going over the latest redundancy gossip now. Mrs Jarvis has been overheard saying that the company are looking to lay off at least ten people – but when will it be announced? And who will go? Last in, first out, that’s the fairest way.

  The phones go quiet again and so Jemmy starts to surf the net. It’s against the company rules but everyone does it. She types his name into Google – Jay Ravello – but the computer is running slow and nothing happens. She knows anyway – the only thing that comes up is a mention of him under Brighton Friends of the Earth. That was how she found out his address. Perhaps he’ll get in touch – if he gets the message – but Jemmy doubts that Jay’s mother will pass the message on. Maybe it was a mistake to go around there so early but she’d woken knowing that she needed to go, knowing that she wouldn’t get through the door of the office if she hadn’t at least tried to find him.

  Or perhaps Jay got the message but doesn’t remember who she is? After all, she never knew him. He was just a boy from college – a few years younger than her, not part of her group of friends. Everyone thought him a nerd, and girly too. He used to wander around with a notebook, claiming he was writing reports for the college magazine but no one ever saw any of the reports. The rumour was that he’d been shut up in a nut house for a while. But then there was that night he’d followed her home, when she was still wearing thick black cardigans and fingerless gloves. And she’d had those cuts on her arms, which she got from falling into barbed wire walking on the Downs, and he’d helped to patch them up.

  And his hands.

  But that was two years ago now,
before she got married to Bill, before there was Laurie. And yet she’s thought of Jay often over the last three months, very often. Sometimes she thinks she sees him – catches a glimpse of his striped scarf on a street corner, sees his curly head in a distant crowd. She talks to him in her head, explaining how her life is now, knowing that he would understand. (Here I am back at work, Jay, and I just thought when I came in this morning that maybe there’d be flowers on my desk, or even a card. Or I just thought someone might mention his name. But no one said anything at all. Silence and silence and silence. And so then I start to think that maybe nothing happened because if everyone else thinks nothing happened then maybe they could be right?)

  She types Jay’s name into Google again, the computer whirrs and rumbles and a list of websites appears. His name is mentioned in the Daily Mail. Something to do with double-decker buses – but that can’t be the same person? Jemmy is about to click on the article when the red button lights up. Good morning, Jemmy speaking, how can I help you? Just let me bring that up on the screen. Mr Adam Giadini in Maida Vale. She imagines someone who works in the media and wears a flowered shirt. Yes, the payment reached us on the twentieth of this month.

  Perhaps she should go around and see Jay’s grandma? He used to talk about her all the time and Jemmy knows where she lives – in that fallen-down Guest House on Monmouth Street with a rainbow flag, plastic windmills stuck along the railings, plants growing in wellington boots, grass pushing up between the paving of the front steps.

  Good morning, Jemmy speaking, how can I help you?

  I’d like to see your cunt.

  Jemmy takes a deep breath. You’d never believe how many perverts there are out there. Two or three ring every day. Once a caller started telling her about having sex with a roast chicken. She keeps her voice firm and even. I’m afraid I can’t continue this conversation so I’m going to put the phone down. That’s what they tell you in the training. You can put the phone down but you have to warn the caller first.