by Kim Kelly
When she returned to the toy department, the customer rush had abated, leaving in its wake all kinds of mess for her to attend to. There was even a breakage to record: a little fairy ornament had been smashed, its head lopped off, its wings chipped and broken. This wouldn’t have been an easy achievement, by any means; the ornament was made of that sturdy polymer stuff – it would have required some force to break it. Nothing short of a hammer or a stomping under the heel of a boot could have done this to the fairy.
People are disgusting. She turned the pieces over in her hand as she walked across the floor for the Damages Book, to note the detail of the stock loss, and she might have devoted the rest of the day to a contemplation of Schopenhauer’s theory of the ultimate pointless stupidity of all human existence, but that the piped music sent her at that moment KC & The Sunshine Band’s hymnal heartbeat, ‘Please Don’t Go’. Of course, Dan looked a little like the lead singer as well, didn’t he, except that Dan played the guitar, not the piano, and was a baritone; nevertheless, Addy looked over at the top of the escalators to see if fate might send her another magical coincidence. It didn’t; this wasn’t Hollywood. In real life, the lead singer, KC, had had a car accident a couple of years ago and had become addicted to painkillers, and Addy had to go over to Kevin in Electricals to get a counter signature on the damaged goods.
‘Hey, Addy.’ Kevin was pleased to see her; ever cheerful, he seemed pleased to see anyone, and especially pleased if they loved gadgets as much as he did. He was nearing forty, but he was a big kid, and she always managed to find a smile for him.
‘Hey, Kevin.’ She held out her hand to show him the broken fairy: ‘We have a casualty.’
‘Oh.’ He peered down at the small, sad collection of bits. ‘Whackadee. Who’d do a thing like that?’ He clicked his tongue. ‘You know, I once found a condom in one of the display toasters? A used one.’
‘Ew.’ Delirium swooped through her.
‘Yeah.’ He nodded, signing the Damages Book as required. ‘There are some kooky people around. Imagine buying that toaster and taking it home and finding a condom in it.’
‘Terrible.’ Addy could barely get the word out. ‘Thanks, Kevin.’ She scuttled back to her department, bursting, not with laughter, no, this wasn’t laughter; it was a response more savage and desperate than that. She searched for something sobering, anchoring, in the words she’d just written in the Damages Book, under the ‘reason’ column: Destroyed by customer (unobserved). One of her tears fell onto the bottom of the page; not a tear of sadness or distress – far more savage and desperate than that, too.
She looked at the top of the escalator again and willed Dan Ackerman not to appear. She threw the fairy bits in the bin. She threw herself there after them.
The sunset sky was orange, golden orange, as she walked, almost jogging against the evening chill, back towards Broadway and Mr Lim’s takeaway. The air was still now, but she imagined the dust stirred up by this morning’s wind hung there, painting the light.
That’s not a pointless or stupid thought, she knew; and she wondered: Maybe I’m meant to be alone. Maybe that’s what minds like mine have to be. Maybe I’ve been trying to fight nature. Like Nick’s gay, I’m just me.
She imagined never having a boyfriend and the thought was unexpectedly comforting: like fried rice, eaten alone in her room. That’s exactly what she’d planned to do from hereon into the night, too: fried rice, solitude, and read over what she’d written of her grandparents yesterday, to see if it really was the beginning of something: a new chapter in every sense.
But tonight was not going to pan out like this. She should have known from the moment she stepped into Mr Lim’s. He wasn’t there; some sour-faced, unhappy stand-in shouted at her from the counter: ‘What you want?’
She got her rice, she took it home; took a fork from the kitchen drawer, ignoring the sounds of a gathering outside in the yard, a flickering of flames from the old rusted drum that passed for a firepit, by the back gate, HRH laughing, a trill of, ‘Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,’ and some male-laden hubbub above which she thought she heard the crushing of a beer can and Chubs Keveney declaring: ‘You’d better believe it.’
Nope. That was the most unbelievable thing Addy had heard all week. Harriet and Chubs toasting marshmallows? That was as plausible as Margaret Thatcher cracking a tinny with the National Secretary of the Shoppies Union: both right wing; very different world views. Addy supposed it was only a trick of dread and hyper-fatigue that she thought someone like Chubs might be in her house. She dismissed it and continued on her way upstairs, where she found that there were no prawns in her fried rice. This was far more disconcerting – Mr Lim always had her rice loaded up with extra goodies, generous chunks of chicken as well – but even still, Addy wasn’t shaken all that badly by it. Perhaps she was past shaking. Post-shaken. Post-disappointment. Post-heartbreak. How postmodern.
She opened her notebook, with her scribbling from yesterday, and, munching a mouthful of her dinner, she read the last thing she wrote:
Anna lingered by the piano, pretending to find the men’s conversation interesting. Her father and Mr Falke were discussing a contractual dispute concerning one of their clients, but it was the young man who’d arrived with Mr Falke that was Anna’s prime concern. She’d never seen him before. Who was
That’s where Addy had broken off, realising the time, panicking that Dan would soon arrive – and that only set the whole disaster replaying in her mind once more. What did she think she was doing, trying to write out her grandparents’ love, when she didn’t know anything about the subject? Or so she felt. What was she doing intruding on their tragedy? But then she’d felt so good yesterday, purposeful, when she was writing; she’d felt a door had not so much opened as flown off its hinges, never to be closed again. She had to get herself back there – to this place where maybe, maybe she truly belonged.
She opened her atlas, found Darmstadt there, and attempted to force her memories into rewind, into streets that wound back to medieval times, before brownshirts and bombs. She heard something smash outside, down in the yard – only a glass, but it instantly brought her Kristallnacht. What was it like for Adam and Anna? Somehow, she saw her grandfather arguing in the street, arguing for just laws, defending the rights of Jewish shopkeepers; her grandmother behind a lace curtain, not wanting to know. Addy had to know. She heard the brick sail through the window, through time. Did that happen to the Loests, at their house in the city? Did Anna cling to Adam, begging him, ‘Please – please, don’t go’? Even if Addy begged Frieda Stevenson for every detail, even if Frieda could say, these were things Addy herself could never know, except here: with her own heart, born of their hearts, writing life out on the page.
She found the house, in her heart, in her mind – a townhouse, narrow yet elegant, a slate roof and powder-blue render, a few streets from the old square. She was there. She was there. And there was no other truth that mattered.
But then, on realising that she was, in the present world of 1985, becoming quite cold, sitting there in only her cotton uniform, she got up to get her warmest cardigan. It was a pukey olive green, with raggedy holes worn through both elbows – she looked like a homeless tea lady now as she wrapped it around herself – and it was a favourite thing, because it had been her father’s. It was as old as she was, older, and she wore it to study, here at this desk; it kept her more than warm: it kept her close to him and his hopes for her, and to her mother, too, for she knew Elke’s hands had touched this wool. Her mother had kissed her father while he wore it; she had brushed a speck of lint from his shoulder; she had washed —
Oh frick it.
Luke Neilson’s jumper was still in the washing machine, downstairs. It had been there since lunchtime-ish yesterday, and would now be a heap of stinking mould, along with her jeans and flannelette shirt and sundry undies. No way would Roz or Harriet have hung out Addy’s washing, thoughtfully or otherwise: Harriet took most of her own washing and dry-cle
aning home for inclusion in the Rawley-Hogue laundry service; Roz only washed when she ran out of clothes, and only ever on a Sunday. Addy couldn’t put it off now that she’d remembered; she’d have to put the load through again, and this time, hang it out. It wouldn’t dry before she left for home, for Port, in the morning; it would have to hang out there in the yard all day; not ideal but not avoidable, either.
Oh well, maybe I’ll scrounge a beer while I’m —
The stereo started up in the lounge – the techno-calypso of Talking Heads’ ‘Once in a Lifetime’ jumping out of the speakers, turned up way too loud. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock; strange for a Saturday night in this house: Roz didn’t usually bring a party home until somewhere after eleven, as she didn’t knock off wenching until at least ten. Addy could only suppose it might perhaps be Harriet’s elder cousin Miles, and some of his friends, who occasionally dropped round to slum it, all law graduates newly dispersed through the city’s preeminent firms.
It was, in fact, Chubs Keveney, though, and with him a girl she didn’t know but vaguely recognised as maybe a First Year, a Sloane Ranger wannabe. The girl was wearing an oversized cardigan as well, only hers was cream mohair, sewn all over with tiny pearls, and she had a big velvet bow in her hair, a lolly-pink bow that was flopping on top of her head in time with the music. Chubs was still in his rugby gear, smeared all over with grot from the game; he had a graze on one of his knees, and he was dancing with the floppy Sloane bunny in his typical hip-thrusting, ape-brained way, smoke in one hand, can of beer in the other. The song was a sermon, convulsive and urgent, on the emptiness of the capitalist dream, and it was turned up so loud, they didn’t hear Addy coming down the stairs, never mind the pertinence of the lyrics.
She couldn’t understand how Chubs Keveney was in her house, but here indeed he was, waving as he saw her, bellowing over the music: ‘Adddeeeee Lowwwest!’ Sloane bunny waved too.
Addy went straight through to the kitchen and out the back door, looking for Harriet, looking to see if she hadn’t fallen through the pages of her notebook and ended up in some alternative universe. This did not make sense at all.
Fear returned, like a hand on her shoulder from a man who wasn’t there.
Harriet was by the fire drum, brandishing a sparkler, slashing it about in the air. She was off her face: drunk. Harriet never got drunk – not like this. Her poison of choice, if she was going to be bad, was cocaine and Pimm’s, and even then, she never lost control. She never had more than one or two beers, because she was always counting her calories. But here she was, just about legless, being grabbed up around the waist by a guy Addy recognised only as a friend of Chubs’, Terry someone – someone also wealthy and Catholic – and he spun her around as she twirled the sparkler.
‘Harriet!’ Addy shouted above the music. ‘Harriet!’
‘Addles!’ The sparkler squiggled frantically. ‘Helloooo!’
Don’t you call me Addles. ‘What’s going on?’ She peered around the yard to see who else was here, trying to find faces above the firelight leaping about in the drum, her vision still dazzled by sparkler trails; she counted four, maybe five others – at least three of them men, two of them in football jerseys.
‘Going?’ Harriet stood up, released by Terry whoever-he-was; she was swaying, regarding the sparkler in her hand as it sputtered out. ‘My sparkle is going. Oh boohoo! Boohoo.’ She twirled it around once more, a spent, charred twig, and then she fell backwards against the tin fence, laughing and laughing, higher and higher. It wasn’t funny. Addy felt her stomach turn over as though it were filled with stones, all grinding shame: for Harriet, and for herself, for every time she’d been that drunk – dangerously drunk.
She asked Terry: ‘What are you all doing here?’
‘Not a lot,’ he replied, lighting a cigarette, not overly drunk himself – not that it was easy to tell with guys inured to necking a whole slab every Saturday night. The record changed inside, a new band, staccato snare and bass, singer with a whiny voice; Terry whoever-he-was said over it: ‘Kicked on at the Cricketers Arms after the game, meant to come back here to have a shower before kicking on further. Seems we got stuck, kicking on here.’
That was hardly an explanation. ‘You just picked our house at random, did you?’
‘Oooooh!’ A chorus of apes, mocking her; another laugh with it, another girl – another Addy didn’t recognise at all.
Harriet slumped down on one of the upturned milkcrates they used for outdoor furniture, as Terry replied: ‘We were invited.’ A shrug, a chuckle: he’d do as he pleased.
Addy was pinned for a moment by the derision that glittered in his eyes; she was unsure what to do. Her nerves sped past fear and into that other realm, that place of disconnection. The other girl had joined Harriet on the milkcrates: ‘Darling, how about we get some Thai food for din-dins. There’s a new place …’
This is none of my business, Addy told herself. Heartbreak does odd things, she knew that from her own learnings, and Harriet was just letting off some steam of her own. For whatever reason, she’d hooked up with this girlfriend, whoever she was, and they’d brought some meatheads home. Not my business at all, Addy told herself again, even though she already knew this night would not end well.
She left them; she had washing to do.
‘That chick has no sense of humour,’ she heard one of the other guys say as she went back inside.
I’ll put the wash on rapid spin cycle, hang it all up in my room until the coast is clear, she was deciding as she slid open the laundry door. It’ll be fine. Not ideal, but fine. Harriet will be fine – her father is a Justice of the Supreme Court. No one is going to harm a hair on her head – not any of those guys, anyway, wouldn’t want to ruin their career chances. I’m just annoyed that they’re making so much noise, when I want to be writing a novel. A novel? Is that really what I’m writing? Yes, I think it is. She let herself smile as she felt the fresh, tender thrill of that, even as she smelt the damp, festy clothes on opening the lid of the washing machine. Yuck. The stereo was belting out a faster song, its lyrics an anthem to adolescent desperation, the whiny voice getting whinier, and angrier, wanting a fuck.
‘Addy Lowest.’ She felt the breath on the back of her neck first, more than she heard the voice.
I just want this week to end, was the last thought she had before she turned around, expecting to see Chubs, expecting to tell him to fuck off and leave her alone. It wasn’t Chubs, though. It was someone whose face she knew – a face at Manning Bar, or in the uni cafeteria line, a face passed on her way between tute rooms – but she couldn’t think of his name. He wasn’t in any way remarkable; just a guy. He wasn’t particularly tall, and yet he filled the doorway. She could smell the grass stains in his jersey and the piss on his breath.
He said: ‘What are you doing here?’
She said: ‘A load of washing. Maybe you should go home and do a load of your own.’
‘You’ve got a smart little mouth on you, don’t you.’ He smiled around his private-school vowels; his eyes were dull, grogged up. His face in her face.
‘What do you want?’ She tried to edge away, but the space was so small, there was nowhere to go; the top of the washing machine dug into her back; the shelf above, where the washing powder and pegs were kept, scraped against her head.
‘I think you know what I want, nursey,’ he said, pressing himself against her, one hand on the shelf, the other on the machine beside her, trapping her there. Nursey? He pushed his erection into her stomach; through his shorts and her uniform she could feel how hard he was. He grabbed her ponytail: ‘I want your little mouth to suck my cock.’
‘My little mouth might want to bite it off,’ she snapped back at him, and instantly regretted it.
‘Like to play rough, do you? All right, then.’ He yanked her head back and held her by the throat against the lid of the machine, and then reached behind him with his other hand to slide the door across. Dark closed around her, except fo
r one tiny sliver of light.
‘No.’ The protest was hopeless – no one would hear her with the music thrashing so loud. She tried to appeal to his senses with the little she had left of her own: ‘If you rape me, I will go to the police.’
This time – this time, I will.
‘And who is going to believe a little scrubber like you?’ he snarled.
Scrubber? As though she was fair game because of her class, because she was from a lesser tribe. And she was, to him, and every man like him. But when she felt something brush the inside of her thigh – his cock, a knuckle, she couldn’t know – she lost her shit entirely: I don’t care if I die. Not this time.
Outside, in the lounge, she heard Chubs saying, ‘This album is so shit from here.’ The music stopped, and in the seconds she thought she might have before the record changed, she screamed for all she was worth; an incoherent stream of every terror she’d ever known. She bashed at the sliding door with her right foot. She bashed at his face; she dug her nails into his cheeks.
‘You fucking bitch!’ He staggered back, almost knocking the door off its track. ‘You crazy, fucking bitch!’
She wasn’t finished yet; she pulled the near-full one-kilo box of washing powder from the shelf and bashed that at him, too. The tiny room filled with soap dust, and although Addy hadn’t intended it, the arsehole copped a lungful – and staggered back again, coughing and heaving, right through the door. The track splintered off the frame above, and the whole thing fell to the floor, where he lay sprawled for a moment, pulling up his shorts, with Chubs looking in from the lounge: ‘Jesus, Rourkie – what the fuck?’
The girl with the bow and mohair cardigan laughed beside him: ‘Oh, Chris, what have you done?’
