True Love, page 7
How easy it would be.
Where are you going? she says.
Her voice is low now, flat and hard.
You know where, he says.
Still he doesn’t have the courage to tell her; still he would rather just leave, would rather close the door behind him and not have to think about her. But she will make him think about her. She will make him spill it all.
I want you to tell me, she says.
He looks up at her, her face slashed with shadow beneath her raised arm.
Angela’s, he says. I’m going to live with her.
He curls on to his side, draws his knees up, scrunches his fists to cover his face. His shoulders start to shake, then his whole body.
I can’t be here, he says. I can’t do it anymore.
She’s furious with him. Furious because Welty’s death has stopped him living. Because he’s allowed it to take, year by year, a little more of himself away from her, the only one that still needs him and has a use for him.
She could still strike him.
For a moment she thinks she has it in her. She could kill him, and everything would be solved. She could leave him here and no one would find him for days.
But she drops the bottle and hears it roll along the floor. She takes the keys from the table and she leaves him lying there, sobbing, still shaking.
She walks out the door and steps into the street. The sky is black and the mizzle of the rain shoals down in the orange flare of the streetlights. It feels cool on her face. Down the road she sees the glow of the pub windows, hears the din from inside. She heads there and ducks into the dark doorway, smells the smoke, soaks up the chatter and the laughter.
She sits on a stool and orders. She talks to no one, only stares, lifts her face to the lights and closes her eyes, opens them and throws a look down the length of bar, at the shimmering rings of beer and gin and rum and whiskey. People lean with forearms and palms, feet propped on the brass rail. She knows plenty of faces. They smile and say hello and she wonders if she’s smiling back.
When she finally blunders her way back home, she opens the door and finds that he’s gone. Everything is as it was before he left. Only she sees something else, a blue and white plastic bag like the ones from the butcher’s. She doesn’t have to open it to know that he’s left his half.
FOR HER, THERE’S NO other real desire. If she is a door, locked and iced shut, then drink is the warm, glowing key that’s been pressed into her palm. It’s happened quickly, her reliance on it. She never feels like she needs it until she needs it, until the prospect of spending the night alone with her own thoughts hits her, and she reasons that the drink is actually helping her, that it’s a contributing factor to her ongoing survival.
She goes down to the shop. Not the shop she works at, but the other shop which is around half a mile walk away. It’s a shameful process. She never catches the shopkeeper’s eye; she always wears something with a hood, makes sure that her face is mostly shadowed. She skulks and veers to keep out of people’s way. She’s less likely to be recognized by anyone here, but there are still plenty of times when she’s been caught off guard.
It’s not that anyone would think it so odd that she’s there, but her sense of paranoia sharpens by the day. The more she drinks the less she sleeps, and the more aware she feels of herself, of how she’s being perceived by those around her. She feels as if her eyes move too quickly in their sockets. She can’t seem to keep her hands still. She imagines that people can see inside her head, can see the great black tangle of fear and pain and anger at work there.
She’s late to work on a morning most days now, and Mr and Mrs Lister ask her if everything’s all right. They’ve become cautious around her, inquiring with soft, low voices, their faces lined with worry. She tells them nothing of what’s happened. They’re kind people and she likes them a great deal, but she has no interest in sharing her private life with them. She can’t afford to lose her job – if she talks too much, she fears they might sense the unease in her, the imbalance, and seek someone else.
The money her da has given her is a cushion, no more. She doesn’t know if he’ll send any more. She hopes he will, hopes it’ll be a monthly thing. But she can’t be sure. She hasn’t heard a word from him, has no idea where he is.
She has no idea what’s going to happen.
She still goes into the charity shop to buy books. But whenever she sits down on the sofa and opens one up, she finds that she can’t concentrate. Her mind is never still, never empty. That night with her da, with him on the floor and her holding the bottle, comes back to her. She turns a page, and there it is again. Other memories, too. It’s like the entire contents of her mind have been unmoored, free to drift in and out of her reality as they please.
At the weekend, the pub, any pub, is where she wants to be. It doesn’t matter what time of the day it is, whether it’s morning or afternoon or at night. As soon as she steps through the door, as soon as she smells the warm sour pull of the spilled beer, sees the rows and rows of bottles stacked behind the bar, she feels something shift inside her. She is alive again, as if she’s been breathing the wrong type of air, as if she’s been living underwater.
Within an hour of arriving, she finds that she’s laughing or singing or dancing, and she knows there are men looking at her and wanting to touch her, wanting to have their lips against hers and their tongues in her mouth, rooting about as if in search of something she’s kept secret from them.
Pressed against a wall or behind the closed door of a cubicle, it’s always at this moment that she wants to shrug whoever it is off and away from her. This is her instinct, but she only ever pulls them closer. Grips them around the neck and sometimes bites them, has more than once drawn blood from their lips or cheek; and she’ll either cop a slap or punch for it, or she’ll find herself tugging at his belt, unbuttoning his jeans, the hard warmth of him inside her mouth as his hand pushes down on the back of her head.
Nothing matters on these days.
When she’s with them, these men, the things that have haunted her, the things that in sobriety cling to her and throw their full weight down upon her are suddenly, miraculously lifted. There is space again inside her. Different wants and needs, those connected purely with her body, are stirred back into motion. She can feel the hot thread of her blood in her arms, in her hands, in the very tips of her fingers. Tears sometimes stream from her eyes without her even knowing. People will stop her and ask if she’s OK, and she’ll look at them, her brow furrowed with confusion, until she reaches up and feels the dampness herself, feels the tears running down her face; and she’ll laugh, laugh so hard that she falls down, and sometimes must be carried to a quiet corner to sleep.
As little as ten minutes later, she’ll wake with a second wind, and it’s as if the night has started all over again. She wants another drink, wants another dance, wants to keep meeting people, must keep laughing.
But there are times when she doesn’t wake up, or she wakes hours later, tucked away down an alley and curled behind a dustbin, the wind blowing and her body shaking. She rises stiffly to her feet and rubs her eyes, not knowing where she’s been or how she’s got there. She sees time jumping forward, leaping back. Flashes of light, colour. Faces: eyes and mouths and teeth and tongues. Sweat patches beneath arms and on backs. A damp curl behind an ear. A gold-link chain nestled in the scuzzy shock of a man’s chest. Details that she can’t piece together.
She’s still not been back to the camp. If Ruth calls her, she tells her that she’s too busy to see her. She knows that Mick and Evelyn have moved away, and Gordon too. Immy has gone with him. She doesn’t know where they’ve gone, they’ve just gone. The camp is slowly closing down, and so is she.
IT’S THE WEEK BEFORE Christmas and Friday rolls around again. There’s a buzz around the town. The air is bitingly cold and people are wrapped up in coats, scarves, gloves – all of which Keely wears to work and keeps on through the day to fend the chill that seeps in every time a customer enters or leaves.
The pub is embracing the festive spirit, different coloured lights slung from the guttering and tinsel tacked to the edge of the bar and up along the shelves. Everything shines or winks. Christmas trees in the windows of nearly every house, electric candles lit and shimmering behind muslin curtains, the televisions seeming to flicker more warmly, splashing colour in mirrors, against walls.
She hasn’t seen her da in over two months. She’s received another sum of money to go toward the rent in the post, but the envelope had no return address on it. No note, nothing. The only way she knew it was him was from his handwriting, the small, cramped letters smudged by the clumsiness of his fist.
She’s working only the morning shift today because she’s booked the afternoon off to start the festivities early. Sarah has done the same, getting the afternoon off from her work as a receptionist. Their plan is to listen to some music and have a few drinks in Keely’s flat and then, at around seven, head to the pub.
As usual, a band have been booked to play. There’s a little stage over by the toilets where four people and their instruments can just about squeeze on. Some very strange acts have played over the years. Billy, the old landlord, still plays in a punk band himself. His hair is dyed jet black and both of his ears are hooped and studded with various rings and balls. With his leather trousers and shin-high boots, he’s copped a bit of stick from some of the locals since he bought the place, but slowly his eccentricities began to appeal, and the pub’s gained something of a reputation for giving acts – comedians, poets, bands – a chance to do their thing.
Keely gets back from her morning shift at the shop. Mrs Lister has taken over behind the till. She knows that Keely’s going out and may even see her later in the pub if she and Mr Lister decide to venture out. It’s the sort of night when even the tamest people in the town make an appearance and have a drink.
Keely showers, dresses, puts on her makeup. She’s started to notice that her skin looks sallower recently. She gives in to the need to put a little more foundation on. Still, she feels attractive, as if most men would want to be with her. It seems strange to her sometimes that this is how she thinks these days. There’d been a time, not so long ago, when she’d barely put a single thought into men or how she might be perceived by them. She’d been aware of them, but not in quite the same way that she is now. Now, there can be times when it’s all she’s able to think about.
The fridge is stocked with cans and she’s bought a bottle of white wine that she and Sarah can share. Neither of them really like it, but it’s Christmas and she feels they might as well have something a little different. Plus, wine, when she’s drunk it in the past, gives her a slightly different kind of buzz, one she feels keeps her mood higher.
She looks at her watch. It’s nearly one thirty. Sarah was meant to be here half an hour ago. She’s always late, but she’ll likely turn up any minute, bustling down the corridor and throwing the door open, immediately launching into some story or other. So she opens a can and sits at the table. She’s in heels and she’s wearing a new dress that she found in the charity shop, a little black sequined thing that hugs her slight frame and makes her bum look bigger than it is, which she’s pleased about.
When it turns two, Sarah still hasn’t arrived.
A minute later, the phone rings. Keely rises to answer it, shimmies her dress down her legs and totters over to the small table where the phone is. It’s Sarah. Her boss won’t let her leave until she’s finished something that’s come up, even though she clearly booked it off weeks ago.
I’m not going to get out for another few hours, she says, so you’ll just have to start without me. But don’t get too fucked, otherwise I might as well not come at all.
They agree to meet at the pub at seven. That gives Keely a good few hours to fill. She’s only had one can, so she could pick up a book, maybe even have a nap; but she’s tried to read before going out before and she’s found it impossible – there’s too much energy in her, too much expectation, to keep still.
It’s still only just past two and the pub won’t shut for another hour. She decides that she might as well go out and have a little drink. See who’s there. Get a feel for what the evening might hold, and then she’ll come back and decide what to do from there.
She changes her heels for the flats she wears at work, because she doesn’t want her feet to be aching. It’s bitterly cold outside. The sky is flat and grey and the sun a pale, drifting disc offering no warmth whatsoever. She can smell a hint of salt drifting in from the sea and it briefly takes her back to the camp, to the dunes, to the dark night she’d found Welty.
But she shakes her head and forces herself to think only of now, of the pub coming into view in the distance. Her breath fogs and her nose runs. Even in her coat, she feels the need to fold her arms and tuck her hands beneath her armpits. She can feel her makeup stiffening unpleasantly when the wind blows, and she keeps having to lift the tip of her index finger up to the corners of her eyes to keep them from running.
There’s a good crowd in the pub. There must be a few Christmas parties going on. It’s warm and stuffy and filled with smoke; the windows are steamed up and most people already look well oiled, their faces red, glistening slightly. Coats are thrown over the backs of chairs. Mistletoe hangs at various points from the ceiling. Music’s playing, all the Christmas songs, the old croony ones and some of the newer ones as well.
She doesn’t recognize many people, nods to the few that she does. She squeezes in at the bar and orders herself a drink. She’ll have one drink here, maybe two, and when they close at three, she’ll head back to hers and put some music on, do her best to keep herself under control until she can head back out to meet Sarah when the pub opens again.
She’s been there maybe ten minutes when she sees him.
The old friend of her da’s, the man who got him the job working as a salesman. She’d rung him months ago now. He seems to be part of a large group, and for a second she thinks that maybe her da might be here. She looks around, standing on her tiptoes, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
The man – she forgets his name – is drunk. He’s small, balding, with close, pug-like features and a large barrel chest that strains against the buttons of his shirt. His hair is thin, biscuit coloured, combed over his sweating pate. He’s dancing a little with a woman who’s much taller than him and who doesn’t appear, by the look on her face, to be enjoying whatever he’s breathing in her ear.
Keely stays where she is, propped against the bar. Her elbows are damp and tacky with spilled beer, but she doesn’t care. She keeps the man fixed in the corner of her eye, making sure not to present the whole of her face to him. It’s unlikely that he’ll recognize her; he’s only met her once, and he’d been in the pub then as well. It had been a couple of weeks after he and her da had started working together. Her da had made out that he was someone worth meeting, a real character, but all she remembers is being bored and moving swiftly away to talk to someone else.
She doesn’t know what she’s going to do, but she can feel a restlessness building in her, the first spike of unease that she knows can quickly morph into something more boisterous, more dangerous.
She could leave.
She could forget that she’s seen him and continue with her day, go home, wait until Sarah arrives, and by the time they return he’ll surely be gone, moved on to some other place or passed out in a taxi home.
But she can’t leave. She won’t allow herself to. It’s an opportunity to do something, and even though she has no idea what that something is, she suddenly feels her legs carrying her through the crowd toward him, pressing between the bodies, angling herself so that she can fit through the slight gaps that open up. She can feel sweat prickling her hairline, and she briefly thinks about how difficult it will be this evening to navigate such a crowd in the heels she’s planning to wear.
Then she’s upon him, tapping his shoulder, and he’s turning to her, his bunched face damp and red, his small eyes searching her own in confusion.
What d’you want?
The woman he’s been talking to slinks away, glancing back over her shoulder.
Eric’s daughter, she says.
The man pauses, searches his brain for an Eric, seems to find it. His features rearrange themselves. He smiles, stretches out both his arms as if to embrace her.
Eric’s a top man, he says. One of the best.
The music is louder over here. He draws in his arms, picks up his drink from a table, then turns back to her.
What can I do for you? he asks.
He winks when he says it, loses his balance slightly, then corrects himself with a slight redistribution of his considerable bulk. Now that she’s closer to him, Keely can almost feel his weight, and she can smell the sharp, raw scent of him. His neck is a thick stump of bunched flesh and his shoulders slope imperceptibly into his arms, both of which don’t so much hang by his sides as remain awkwardly suspended a little, as if he were wearing armbands.
You can give me his address, she says.
He shakes his head, though he’s still smiling now, enjoying himself. He’s the sort of man who takes every interaction to be a part of his own private game. In his head, he acknowledges that he’s the underdog, but if he boxes clever there’s a girl who’s under half his age that could be nudged in the direction of his bed.
That wouldn’t be right, he says. Not my business to be getting involved with you and your daddy. If he’s taken himself off, then he must’ve had his reasons.
He turns away from her slightly as if he’s about to leave. But, he says, I might be persuaded.
His porcine eyes roll ceilingward and with one stubby finger he points up at a clutch of mistletoe that happens to be hanging above them.
For a kiss I might be persuaded, he says.
No one has ever looked more revolting to her. This is the man her da works for. She imagines the pair of them drinking together, jawing away, and she feels her fist bunch at her side. She could drive it into his nose before he’d even know what happened. Then she could stomp and kick and scratch at him when he was on the floor. She sees it all in her mind’s eye and her palms start to sweat.
