by Rachel Joyce
The supermarket is so vast it weaves her into a daze. She keeps forgetting why she’s here. So instead of the delicatessen, she finds herself in a long aisle staring at dental products. Toothbrushes, mouthwashes, specialist toothpaste, floss tape and picks. That’s when she hears it. The ‘Four Seasons’. The concerto called Spring.
It’s thin over the system, but Ilse freezes. She feels desperate to hear the birds. She is barely breathing, she wants it so much. At the same time a particularly large young man with wild brown hair thunders past, grabs any old tube of toothpaste, and then crashes straight into her.
Ilse has never been overweight. Not even when she returned suddenly to Germany in June ’88 and indulged in what her mother called a period of comfort eating. Not even when her father died in hospital in ’89 and that summer she went on holiday with her mother to Italy, where they ate pasta and attended concerts in churches every night. Yes, she gained a little extra ring of flesh around her tummy in her forties, some winglike flappy bits she would prefer not to have at the tops of her arms, but she still fits a size ten; she has certainly never floored another human being. Nevertheless, on bumping into her, this great big young man shrieks, jumps backwards, trips over his own feet, and keels over.
‘What happened? Are you OK?’
She is on her knees without noticing herself going down. He lies very still. A floored giant. Arms at his sides. Great big trainers poked upwards.
And what does she do? Hearing Vivaldi in the middle of Lidl? Beside toothpaste, both the special whitening and also striped fluoride varieties? Staring into the face of a young man with hair so wild you could lose things in there?
She bursts into tears.
‘Oh my God,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?’
The young man seems to have sat up.
‘No, I’m fine. You just – I am fine. I really am.’
She offers her hand to help him but he mistakes this as a need for assistance and scrambles to his knees, then back to full height. Stooping over her, he puts out his palm and guides her to her feet.
She remembers a lake, twenty-one years ago. Moonlight on the water, like a hundred pins, swinging this way and that. Meanwhile Vivaldi’s birds swoop between the shelves of Lidl—
‘Are you OK now?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’ She does her best to pull her face in order. ‘You?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ He laughs. ‘See you, then.’
She watches him shambling towards the end of the aisle.
This still happens occasionally, even after all this time. She spots Frank inside a doorway, waiting for the right opportunity to step out and say, Well there you are, hello! Now and then she sees him lumber down an alley or turn a street corner, or maybe he is just a tall, broad-shouldered figure drinking tea in a café. She might be staring at a window, and there he is, his mirror-reflection shining beside hers. Or she crosses a road and suddenly believes – no, she knows – he is crossing one too. Sometimes he has a wife, sometimes he has kids, once he was driving the car behind hers, another time he was across a crowded room at a party, simply gazing at her with such great hope it took her breath away. If she approaches, he withdraws – it is not him, of course, it is some other man – leaving her with nothing but the vacant space inside her. Frank is a ghost that is permanently waiting, if not directly in her eyeline, then just on the periphery. Not that she has ever told anyone. Why would she? He is her skin and bone, he is her secret. He always was.
After all, she is not the only person who carries her heart in a suitcase. Several girlfriends – marriages on the rocks, children off to university – have discovered that what they need is not in the present, and not in the future either, but left behind somewhere in the past. A few friends use Friends Reunited to link up with old mates from college. Others use Facebook. One has recently started dating her first boyfriend, whom she hadn’t seen since they were teenagers. Another is thinking about moving back to her hometown.
‘Guten Tag.’
The girl at the till is kind. Ilse has been living in her mother’s apartment for less than a year but she always waits in this girl’s queue, even if it’s longer than the others. She can’t be more than eighteen and she has a ring through her nose that makes Ilse sad for some reason, but she never fails to say something nice as she scans her customers’ groceries, little encouraging things like ‘Oh, that looks delicious,’ or ‘I think I might buy that too,’ so that people feel good about the way they live their lives and the things they choose from supermarket shelves in order to fill them.
Ilse tries to pack her shopping into bags but her hands are stiff today – the weather doesn’t help – and she’s busy thinking of Frank, and she makes a complete mess of the job.
‘It’s the time of year,’ says the till girl. ‘It’s always bad for people at this time of year.’ She glances at Ilse’s shopping. ‘You’re on your own? That’s right?’
‘I came back a year ago to nurse my mother. She died four months ago.’
‘That’s sad.’
‘It is. I miss her.’ Though the worst part was holding the hand of a woman who looked in her eyes and had no idea who she was. It was like a living death, infinitely longer and more bewildering than the moment her mother simply gazed at her and then stopped breathing. Nevertheless she wishes it was as easy as that, that she could just say she missed her mother, and that would be the end of it. Truth is, she has never felt so lonely. Whole days can pass without her uttering so much as a word. Not that her mother had said anything recently that would prompt a conversation, apart from the odd moan, the odd delightful and unexplained trickle of laughter – but at least there were the nurses to talk to, or someone else also visiting a relative. Now she is parentless, she feels strangely exposed and heroic. As if she has been called to step next into the firing line.
But the nice girl is still talking. ‘Do you have a dog?’
‘A what?’
‘A dog can help.’
Ilse says no, she doesn’t have a dog. She packs one onion in her bag as well as a half-litre of milk. She covers them with a lettuce.
‘Some people like you have a dog. It keeps them active.’
‘I’m fifty-one,’ says Ilse.
‘Yes,’ says the girl; she doesn’t seem to have heard. She is talking about a Pekinese or a poodle. Better still, these days you can get a crossbreed. A Pekinese that is also a poodle. They are nice, those little dogs. They sit on your lap. You can buy them outfits on the internet, little jackets and hats and things. You can carry them in your handbag to the park. That way you can meet other people who also have little dogs. It’s good to get out. All this from a sweet young girl with a ring through her nose. She doesn’t look as if she’s stepped outside in months, let alone visited a park with a tiny cross-breed in her handbag.
‘But I don’t want to go to the park,’ says Ilse. ‘I don’t want a dog.’ She spots him again, the very large young man she floored earlier. He is at the next till, digging through his pockets for loose change in order to pay for his toothpaste. Spotting her, he grins and waves before he lollops off to the entrance where a young woman in a miniskirt is waiting. Ilse guesses he tells his girlfriend about the accident because she reaches up and touches his hair and kisses his forehead. It’s such a small gesture, but infinitely tender, infinitely familiar. The girl would find him even in a crowd, even with a blindfold on her.
‘Shall I put your cold meats in a separate bag?’
The girl is waiting for Ilse to reply. Other people are waiting too – a couple behind her, dressed in Mr and Mrs quilted jackets, as well as an old man slowly packing his own little bag of groceries at the next till. So is this her future, then? Single baskets, a bit of lettuce, and meals for one?
‘I have to go back.’
‘Go back?’ says the girl. ‘Have you lost something?’ She presses her buzzer for assistance.
‘England,’ Ilse Brauchmann announces to the queue. ‘I have to go back n
ow.’
Once she has made the decision, it seems simple. So ordinary and straightforward, she can’t believe it has taken her twenty-one years. But she still forgets. These days you can do anything. You can have a thought – angry, needy, ecstatic, blasphemous, no matter what – and it can be out there within a second; you don’t even have to think about your thought. You can simply have it and be done. Next thought, please.
She buys her air ticket online. She checks in, chooses her seat and prints off her boarding pass. She throws things in a wheelie suitcase – now she has made her decision, she is impatient to be gone. Enough for four nights and English rain. She emails several friends, telling them not to worry, she has to go away for a few days. She flicks through her diary and contacts all her pupils for the week, explaining the same thing, and adding her most sincere apologies. She knocks on the doors of both neighbours but there is no answer. Instead she leaves them each a note – I have been called away on business. She signs her name, Ilse Brauchmann, and then adds that she is her mother’s daughter in case they have forgotten.
By six o’clock, she is on a plane to England. Half past nine, she is in a hire car. Ring road after ring road. Warehouses like hangars. A landfill site the size of a hill. Clouds of gulls. Vast glass towers rising in the docklands area.
She recognizes none of it.
‘Is it a special occasion?’ asks the woman at reception.
‘Bitte?’
The receptionist explains again. Not in German or indeed any other European language. Just a little bit louder and slower, as if Ilse is not standing immediately in front of the desk, but beside the decorative wall of water that falls endlessly on the other side of the hotel atrium.
Now that she is here, Ilse’s English is taking a little while to wake up. Also, she can’t help wondering if Frank will just appear. As if by magic. Her heart leaps about like a thing with strings. It’s enough to make anyone forget their vocabulary.
The receptionist asks for a third time if she is here for a special occasion.
‘What kind of special occasion?’
The receptionist consults the screen of her computer. She wears a blue neck-scarf to show that she is not just an ordinary member of the public who has wandered in off the street, but a fully paid and extremely helpful member of staff.
She runs through the options.
Is Ilse celebrating a) a birthday, b) a wedding anniversary, or c) a honeymoon? Or is she here in d) a business capacity? Ilse apologizes; she is just here to find someone. Would it make any difference to the price, she asks, if she were here for any of the other reasons? Again the receptionist consults her computer.
There is a) the birthday package – free helium balloon – there is b) and c) a wedding package – petals and a half-bottle of Prosecco. There is also d) a business and spa treatment package, particularly aimed at women of a certain age. No balloon; no petals either. But you do get the half-bottle, which you can exchange for a full bottle of fizzy water, as well as complimentary use of the gym.
Ilse asks for a double room with a view, please. Four nights.
Would she like an upgrade?
Why would she want an upgrade?
It’s a quiet time of year. The receptionist can offer a very nice executive suite with two double beds and a seating area, offering a panoramic view. Ilse takes it. She hasn’t had a holiday in years.
From her window she can almost see the whole city. Thousands of tiny lights tremble and flash and move at her feet. The sky tonight is just an empty old thing that vaguely glows orange; it’s got nothing on the humans.
Her suite is the size of her mother’s apartment. The two beds are so vast she could lie on them widthways and still not flop over the edge. The separate seating area might house a family, and the bathroom has facilities to shower, bath and also – should she feel the need – press a pair of trousers. She hangs her clothes in the wardrobe, unpacks her toiletries; they barely graze the space. When she checks her phone, there are already two excited texts from girlfriends. ‘Where are you?’
‘What’s going on, IB?’ Afterwards she orders a late dinner in the restaurant – tables of single diners, mostly men. But, faced with food, even a bowl of soup, she can’t eat.
There’s a familiar smell she can’t put her finger on. It’s only as she enters the glass-fronted lift that she gets it.
Cheese and onion.
41
Unity Street
NINE O’CLOCK IN the morning; Ilse Brauchmann parks on Unity Street. She’s so nervous she hits the kerb.
So here she is, standing once more beside the parade of shops where she found herself long ago, gazing at Frank for the first time with her hands cupped to the window. She had only been in England for three days. She could barely afford a hot meal and she was staying in a hostel where people shouted all night. She knew, the moment she spotted him, that her life was about to be overturned. No wonder she passed out.
The shops are all boarded up – the old bakery, the florist, Articles of Faith (it has dropped some letters. It’s now ‘ti les of Fa t’), the undertakers and the tattoo parlour. Even the big pub on the corner is shuttered. Graffiti everywhere, peeling paint and broken windows; though it’s likely squatters live above Maud’s old place because there are sheets of cardboard at the window, and a milk carton on the ledge. It’s the empty music shop that leaves her reeling. The external brickwork is relatively intact but blackened and charred all over, the stain of soot exploding around the windows. It’s impossible to see inside. Where there was glass there are only boards. A buddleia has decided it would be nice to grow out of what is left of the roof. A fire? Two pigeons emerge with a great clattering of wings from an upstairs window. When did this happen?
And what about Fort Development? The parade has For Sale signs nailed all over it. The old bombsite at the end has been tarmacked but it still looks like a bombsite; buddleia pushes through, lifting the tarmac like so much dead skin, along with mounds of rubbish and old household junk, and notices warning NO FLY TIPPING.
NF POWER. GO HOME. EAT DA RICH.
She shivers.
Despite the abandoned parade on one side, the terraced houses on Unity Street have done themselves up a bit. Some have loft extensions and they all wear satellite dishes like hard hats. Front gardens – small as they are – have been landscaped with a shrub or two, a strip of gravel for extra parking. Someone has erected a plastic gazebo, someone else has parked a motor home. For the first time in many years, she thinks about Mrs Roussos and wonders what happened to her. Her house has matching blue blinds now, pulled down halfway, like a set of sleepy, made-up eyes. From an upstairs window, a line of soft toys seem to be admiring the view.
Ilse asks in a newsagent’s around the corner if the owner knew a man called Frank who ran a music shop. The owner says he doesn’t. Does he know anything about a fire on Unity Street? He doesn’t. A large woman with a shopping basket containing nothing but packets of biscuits says she heard something once about a load of vinyl going up in flames, but not about a record shop. They suggest she should try the 24-hour cash and carry. So Ilse tries the cash and carry and the young man at the till – fifteen if he’s a day – says he had no idea there was once a record shop round here – ‘What, it sold like actual records? That must have been sick.’ So there we go. That is the end of that line of enquiry.
Now that she is away from the docklands development, she sees how poor and grey this city still is. Other places in the world have got smarter and moved on, but there is a forgottenness here. Bar the small pockets of gentrification, everything is pretty much the same as it was in 1988. A man asleep in a doorway in broad daylight. A group of junkies. Three young men with muzzled dogs. A girl passed out on a bench. You wouldn’t want to be out on your own at night.
She returns to Unity Street. Knocks on a few doors. Her head is beginning to hurt, right between the eyes, like a nail being twisted. She asks several passers-by – a man walking his dog, two bo
ys with so many piercings they look upholstered. No one knew there was a music shop here, and they certainly never heard of a guy called Frank. A man says he heard there was a fire here once, and someone had to go to hospital. So does anyone know who owns these shops? ‘People used to say the council were gonna knock that street down,’ says another woman. ‘They were gonna build a massive car park. But then the developer went bust. Loads of people lost their savings. You could buy those houses for nothing.’
Ilse asks if anyone is in touch with a tattooist called Maud? She would be about fifty now. No one has heard of her either. When Ilse asks about the religious gift shop, a man downright laughs. Maybe try online, he tells her, if you want to get weird shit like that. She makes her way back to Castlegate, asking people as she passes. It’s the same each time. No one has heard of Frank or a music shop. Her face hurts with all the smiling she’s had to put it through.
She realizes it must be lunchtime. She buys a sandwich but she still can’t eat. She sits on a bench on Castlegate, beside a small temporary merry-go-round.
Not even her close friends know the truth about her six months in England. They knew at the time about Richard, of course, and the broken engagement – several told her she was a fool. They had no idea about her love for an English man who talked to her once a week about music. When he rejected her, it was more than she could bear; it hurt far too much to tell it. Besides, if you don’t say something for long enough, it begins to seal over. A part of yourself that only exists in storage. You could probably leave it all your life. Boxed away. Just as she had once done with music.
That afternoon Ilse searches the entire city by foot. Castlegate, alleyways, pedestrianized areas, residential streets, the cathedral. The 2008 recession has taken its toll. Many shop windows are empty. FINAL REDUCTIONS. CLOSING DOWN! EVERYTHING MUST GO! WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK OUR CUSTOMERS. Where there was once a Woolworths, there is a store selling cut-price pine furniture. A big bookshop has closed. So has a women’s boutique. There is no butcher on the corner, no fruit and veg shop, no fishmonger. Not that she has thought of these places in twenty-one years, but now they are gone, she feels the loss of them as if they have been taken from her by stealth. They have been replaced mostly with charity shops, pawnshops and mobile phone outlets. Bargain Booze. USA Chicken.
