‘I think we should stop.’
She says nothing, doesn’t move, just looks at him.
‘You don’t seem surprised,’ he says.
With total self-control, she raises an arm and rubs her cheek affectedly. ‘I know you have your doubts. I’ve already said I don’t mind.’
‘That’s the point.’
Don’t contradict him anymore. Go along with it now.
‘I’m more than halfway through my life, I have my own practice, I have an ex-wife, I’m going bald, I’ve got a car.’
‘You’ve got a car.’
‘It’s not about the car.’
‘Of course it’s not about the car.’
‘You don’t have your own house.’
‘No.’
‘You’re studying. Or you should be. You have to sort things out with your parents, you have to … you have to …. This whole business with your mother. I’ve done all that. I’m too old for this. But you have to go through it. You have to make your own mistakes.’
‘Mistakes?’
‘You have to be able to make them.’
‘Is it because I live here now?’
‘Please, Coco, I know much more than you! I turn into an intolerable person when I’m around you. I don’t want to be like that.’
‘You’re not like that,’ Coco says, much too fast.
‘Yes I am, Coco.’
‘Yes,’ she says and laughs, because this is the man she can say anything to, the first person she can say anything to, and she mustn’t lose that. She mustn’t lose being-able-to-say-everything, even though it means not being able to say some things to him anymore. Her thoughts jam, but the fact that he can’t leave continues to reverberate. He is talking about mistakes she has to make again.
‘You have to live,’ she hears him say, but she doesn’t want to live, she wants him. She can’t say that aloud either, it would drive him away even faster.
She looks at the arch of his upper lip, its fine contours. The dark eyes that always shine and the nose with its subtle, so regal curves. From a distance he’s a balding, somewhat corpulent middle-aged man, but from close up there are those eyes, those lips, those eyebrows, those slender hands. You have to stay close. From close up everything is good and that’s what she wants, to be so close to someone that she no longer knows where she ends and he begins. He has stopped talking, the eyes shine more than usual. He is afraid. He can’t be alone. That’s why she was able to catch him. She knows that now. His divorce wasn’t even through.
‘You’re not an intolerable person. An intolerable person would never call himself intolerable.’
He smiles cautiously. ‘I have to let you go,’ he says.
‘I love you.’
He says, ‘I don’t respect you.’
Now he’s not smiling. He means it. She feels the anger rising inside, but still she remains calm and runs through her options. She won’t let him go just like that. She wants to beat him again. No one leaves her, goddammit. She sits down next to him on the bed.
‘That’s not great,’ she says. She lets herself fall back and looks up at him. She smiles. She lays a hand on his thigh, too close to the groin. It doesn’t need much, she is young. She is fat, but she is young, it suits her.
‘Your mother,’ he whispers as she zips open his fly.
‘I’m not interested in my mother,’ Coco says. She pulls his trousers down over his hips, he works with her, lifting up his buttocks slightly. His cock is hard and erect in his underpants. She pulls his pants off. She kneels down between his legs, spreads his legs. She holds one hand gently against his cock, on the side it bends towards a little. That way it’s resting against her hand. She bends over and she licks him slowly from the balls upwards. She licks his cock, very gently and carefully, until it is completely wet. She gently licks across his glans. She bites, with full wet lips, the way you’d bite the top off an ice cream. He trembles. He jerks. She lets saliva drip over his cock, making everything even wetter. She sits up, takes off her trousers, climbs over him and uses one hand to guide his wet cock in the right direction, sits down on him, glides around him and sighs. She goes up, down, tilting her hips backwards and forwards, fucks him, leans back, feels with a hand behind her to grab onto his balls, pushes them against her buttocks. She fucks him and forgets him. He’s leaving anyway. She does what she feels like, rides him, disappears.
‘I’m…’ she says, but she doesn’t finish the sentence—I’m dying—don’t scare him off, but she is. She feels her eyes turn away, catches just a glimpse of his fearful look. She shakes her head, like someone dismissing an image, she smiles. Then he gets up, still inside her. She rolls over. Now she lies on her back and he thrusts hard into her. She groans.
‘Am I hurting you?’ he asks.
Instead of, ‘Yes, but I want that,’ she says, ‘No.’
As he fucks her, she feels herself becoming an object and she wants to become an object. Her body slackens and she remembers her old plastic inflatable seal and how she used to lie on top of the animal when it needed emptying and how one afternoon she’d just stayed there lying on it at the bottom of the garden and had fallen asleep. She had woken up, sweating on the flat blue plastic seal in the sun.
‘Am I too heavy?’ he asks. He’s been lying on her without moving for a while.
‘No,’ she says.
He rolls off her.
‘Sometimes you look like you’re in pain,’ he says. She smiles like one of those dolls with special features. She is changing in her mother’s house. It feels familiar, being an object, but she knows he mustn’t see it. He kisses the scar on her forehead. He kisses the large scar on her neck, on her back. He kisses the scar on her calf and carries on searching.
‘All of them from the sunroom window?’ he asks.
‘I think so. I don’t know, there was always something that was bleeding, wasn’t there? When you were a kid your knees were always all scabbed, or your elbows.’
‘Not me, I never had scabby knees,’ Hans says.
‘Then you were a strange child.’
‘Because I never walked through a window?’
‘Cycled.’
They got dressed. Hans didn’t say anything. Coco smiled. It wouldn’t be polite, fucking her and then leaving her. More time had been won.
‘What are you doing with me?’ Hans asks as he ties his shoelaces, panting.
‘I’m like a dog from a dog’s home,’ Coco says, ‘eternally grateful.’
He looks up, concerned, his face is red from bending down.
‘We’ll see,’ Coco says, ‘OK? I get it.’
‘You’re a special woman,’ he says.
Keeping up the smile is difficult. It doesn’t seem good to her, being a special woman.
As she lets Hans out, the framer’s van stops in front of the door. Martin’s beard has gone grey.
‘All right Coco, m’doll! I heard about you.’
‘Yes, I’m living here for a while.’
‘Yes, that’s what she said.’
‘Who?’
‘Your mother, who else?’ Martin says and Coco feels warm, the way being in love feels warm, because her mother mentions her to other people. Martin fetches a rollator from the back of the van.
‘This is Martin, Mum’s boss,’ she says to Hans. They shake hands. Hans doesn’t introduce himself.
‘I’m on the doubles, could you just chuck this inside?’ Martin asks, lifting up the rollator and giving it to Hans. Hans goes back into the house. Her mother’s voice, she can’t hear what she’s saying. Then she hears Hans explaining how the rollator works, that it’s got a brake, as though he knows everything about rollators and teaches people how to use them all the time.
‘I didn’t know she was getting a rollator.’
‘Oh, we’re looking after her.’
‘We’re going to put the bed downstairs.’
‘Need any help?’ Martin gets back in.
‘Dad and Miriam are helping
.’
‘I see. Give my regards to your mother. I’ll be back tomorrow, but she knows that.’
Martin leaves. Coco waits for Hans on the pavement. He doesn’t appear for a long time. She doesn’t hear anything.
When he comes outside, he says, ‘I don’t mind her.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your mother and me, we can get along all right.’
‘You’re not interested in her,’ Coco says.
‘Did I say that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, then that’s changed.’ He chuckles to himself and Coco thinks she ought to laugh too, she doesn’t want to be uptight. She doesn’t laugh.
‘She’s got something,’ Hans says now, ‘and I don’t say that about many people.’
‘So she should be happy about that? She should consider herself honoured?’
He keeps on chuckling and kisses her, the way you’d kiss a girlfriend you’ll see again soon. He finds her mother interesting.
#
The hairdresser helps Elizabeth out of her coat. She doesn’t move. She lets her arms hang loosely beside her body as he takes off her coat. She’s still recovering from the zip. She was trembling so much when she tried to open the coat’s zip that she’d barely managed it. She had come on foot. After all she had a rollator now and that’s what they’re for, isn’t it? So you can keep on walking. Why’d you get so bloody tired then? She’d only called yesterday but he had space today.
‘Wash and set,’ she says as she sits down. She’d had it cut recently.
‘Wash and set?’
It was a thing for old ladies. She has often seen him do it. Some of them came every week. Which is not that odd, with a wash and set.
‘Just giving it a try.’
‘So that’s what we’ll do.’
‘Did you hear about my daughter?’
‘What?’
‘Living with me again.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Her idea.’
‘Not managing anymore on your own then?’
‘She wants to spend a bit more time with me, she said.’
‘Is it difficult for her?’
‘What?’
‘You being sick.’
‘For her?’
‘You are her mother.’
‘Yes, that’s true I suppose.’
‘Really nothing off?’
‘Just a wash and set.’
‘Hope it doesn’t rain.’
‘Otherwise I’ll just stay here.’
‘I’ve got enough reading material.’
‘Exactly.’
‘She’s not any easy child.’
‘Nervous type. Always has been.’
When Elisabeth sits under the hood dryer she feels how calm she is. Wilbert is coming this afternoon. Of course. Now that he’s needed. He comes when he’s needed. The bed has to go downstairs. Miriam is coming with him. Coco told her this morning, she looked anxious. How nervous that child is. I have to help people a bit, Elisabeth thinks. I have to show them that everything’s fine. They don’t know that.
The first time she saw Miriam, Wilbert and Coco had already moved out. It was a Thursday and Coco was at school. The toy rabbit that should have gone with her in her rucksack had been left behind. Coco couldn’t do without the rabbit. Elisabeth went to the shop to drop it off.
When she entered the shop and saw the little dumpy woman behind the counter, Elisabeth smiled. Ach, she thought, it’s only you, as if she already knew her.
‘You’re Miriam,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Miriam said.
Elisabeth held up the fluffy rabbit.
‘Elisabeth,’ Miriam said.
‘Coco’s rabbit,’ Elisabeth said.
‘Och, the raaabbit,’ Miriam said, she had a Groningen accent.
Elisabeth smiled again. It was fine. He could live with this dumpy little woman. The phone rang. Miriam turned around, she had a flat arse. Her plumpness was a width thing only. Big hips, no arse. Elisabeth knew that she was better and silently gave them permission. It didn’t matter. The woman didn’t matter.
The hairdresser turns off the hood dryer and feels her hair.
‘Just a bit more,’ he says.
‘You’ve never met her, have you?’
‘Who?’
‘Wilbert’s new wife.’
‘No,’ the hairdressers says, ‘quite a simple woman I hear.’
‘Yes,’ Elisabeth says, ‘a sweet woman, you know, a really sweet woman.’
‘Yes, I suppose. Another five minutes.’ He turns the dryer back on.
The hairdresser helps her into her coat and this time he does the zip.
‘Come here, Liz,’ he says and kisses her three times on the cheeks. It’s the first time he has kissed her. He turns around at once, to open the door for her.
She wants to walk to the frame shop, but she is too tired. When she finally makes it home and stands in her own hall, the shaking has become so bad that she can no longer open the coat zip. She sits down on her rollator. The bell rings. Coco runs down the stairs and falters when she sees her.
‘Oh… You’re back already.’
Elisabeth doesn’t know what that ‘oh’ means, apart from that it always means something and she’s too tired to decode it.
‘Can you open the door?’ she asks.
‘Dad’s coming to help with the bed.’
‘Yes, I know that. Can you just open it?’
Coco goes around her and waits by the door.
‘And Miriam too.’ The bell goes again.
‘Come on, just open it.’
Coco opens the door, slowly. Elisabeth sees Wilbert, just Wilbert. Ach, of course, no different from usual. She always sees him on Coco’s birthday, but he never comes to the house anymore. Miriam is standing behind him. Wilbert kisses his daughter and comes into the hall. Elisabeth smiles at him.
‘Oh, were you just leaving?’ he asks.
‘I just got in,’ she said. ‘I’ve still got my coat on. Could you help me with the zip? I can’t get the zip open.’
Wilbert gives her a funny look. They all give her a funny look.
‘I’m shaking, so I can’t get the zip open.’
Wilbert doesn’t react.
‘The zip just needs opening,’ she says, ‘that’s all.’
‘I’ll help you,’ Coco says.
Wilbert immediately steps to the side and Coco helps her take her coat off. Miriam is still standing in the porch. She doesn’t budge. Everyone looks at her now. Why are they doing that? It must be annoying.
‘Look at you,’ says Elisabeth.
‘Yes,’ says Miriam, ‘it’s me.’
‘Older, aren’t you.’ Elisabeth says.
‘Pardon?’
‘You’re older.’
‘Mum!’ What’s this now?
‘Aren’t we all?’
‘We all are, Coco, we all are!’ Miriam smiles. She doesn’t need to. ‘I came along too, I hope you don’t mind. Wilbert asked me to help with the bed. I thought it would be all right.’ Now she smiles like someone in pain, but she doesn’t move an inch.
‘Didn’t you have to be in the shop?’
‘I stopped working in the shop ages ago.’
‘Mum, you know that.’
‘I work from home,’ Miriam says.
‘Are you coming in?’
‘Yes?’
Hadn’t she been clear? ‘You’re not a vampire, are you?’
‘Mum!’
‘Because vampires can’t enter a house until they’ve been invited.’ She says it fast. Just to explain. ‘That’s why.’
‘Mum!’
‘What?’
‘Stop being weird.’
‘I’m not saying she’s a vampire. You didn’t take it like that, did you, Miriam?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Come in,’ Coco says, and only then does Miriam come into the hall.
‘Didn’t you know that?’ Elisabet
h doesn’t want to be misunderstood. ‘You have to be invited in by someone who actually lives in the house. If you’re a vampire.’
‘I actually live in this house, don’t I?’ says Coco.
Elisabeth thinks: that’s not true and says, ‘It doesn’t really matter whether you do or not because Miriam isn’t a vampire. Are you, Miriam?’
‘Not that I know of.’ Miriam giggles.
‘I’m sure you like some coffee?’ Be friendly. Be obviously friendly. Even towards her. ‘Miriam too? Come on, no, to the right, we always sit in the kitchen. Don’t we? Wilbert?’
‘Where does the bed need to go?’ Wilbert asks. ‘Shall we do the bed first?’ He goes into the sitting room. Coco and her mother follow him.
The liar. As though he doesn’t know her. As though they didn’t always sit in the kitchen. As though all those years they’ve no longer been together weren’t just nonsense, as though they couldn’t pick up where they left off. In three days you can make a frame five centuries old, in two hours you can make it new. Time is nothing.
Elisabeth stands on the doorstep, leaning on her rollator.
Miriam says, ‘Of course Coco has filled us in a little bit on the whole state of affairs and all that.’
Elisabeth is curious as to what ‘little bit on the whole state of affairs’ Coco has filled her in on, but she doesn’t want to be difficult. She sees their discomfort. She says, ‘That’s good.’
‘It’s shit,’ Wilbert says.
‘Yes,’ Elisabeth says.
‘The bed,’ Coco says.
Elisabeth steps to the side, Coco and Miriam go up the stairs. Wilbert pauses in the hall. He waits until Coco and Miriam can no longer hear him.
‘Are you all right?’ he asks.
‘I’m all right,’ Elisabeth says. Wilbert shaved yesterday but not today. She can still see from his beard growth how many days ago it was. She feels it in the palm of her hand. She knows how it would feel were she to lay her hand on his cheek.
#
The bed is going in the sunroom, under the old chandelier in front of the large window that takes up the entire back wall. The sofa is at right angles to the bed. It fits if the sunroom doors are left open. Coco stands next to the bed and looks into the garden, which is a few metres lower. The basement is no longer in use. She tries to make out the crack in gravel tiles of the terrace where she fell, but the tiles are green and muddy and the crack is covered.
Craving Page 6
