The Loosening Skin

by Aliya Whiteley

  I make crackling noises at the back of my throat. ‘Sorry Howard… going through… a tunnel…’

  ‘Mik, phones don’t even do that any more. You’ve seen too many old films. Just hang up like a normal person.’

  ‘Can’t… hear… you…’

  I end the call, and smile to myself all the way to Lyneham.

  Underneath.

  The people living in Petra’s old house know nothing about its connection to her. They are a quiet couple, living and growing together in a way that probably makes them look older than they are, and they have likeable, open faces as I stand on their doorstep and question them on this hot Saturday afternoon.

  The house is one of a row that overlooks the long fence that runs around the laboratories. An RAF base once, my online searching informed me that it was bought at a rock-bottom price by Suscutin six years ago, and revamped for:

  The Next Stage of Our Evolution

  That was what their website claimed, anyway.

  ‘All the houses around here are owned by employees, now,’ says the man. ‘It’s convenient, that’s the main reason we bought. Plus the company has a private security force that does the rounds out on the estate sometimes as well as inside the wire, which is good. They drive round twice a night.’

  ‘Why? Is there trouble?’

  ‘No, it’s just because of the protestors, particularly this time of year,’ says the woman. ‘Petra Cross really used to live here? We bought it at auction. No wonder she tried to burn the laboratories down, if they moved in just next door to her and she hated them so much.’

  ‘She could have moved,’ the man points out.

  ‘Why is it so bad at this time of year? With the protestors?’ I ask.

  ‘Usually they keep to camping along the back fence, although the farmer keeps trying to get them moved off, and they aren’t much bother,’ says the woman. It sounds like a very British form of resistance, with an annoyed farmer, camping and everybody determined to make theirpoint without inconveniencing each other any more than necessary. ‘But a lot more turn up come the anniversary of the arson attempt, and they stay in the village. They can get a bit loud in the pub, and mess up the churchyard. Excuse me for asking, but aren’t you Mickey Stuck?’

  So that explains why they’re being so loquacious, so helpful. They feel they already know me in some way. There are strange benefits to fame that pop up in the most unexpected of places.

  ‘I am, yeah. It’s been lovely to meet you, and thanks for your help.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ says the man. ‘Do you need to come in and call someone?’

  They must have seen the paper; it laid it on thick about the state of my mental health. Or perhaps they think celebrities shouldn’t be out, wandering around, unsupervised. Their concern touches me.

  ‘I’m really fine. I’m researching a new film.’

  ‘That’s right, you’re producing them now, aren’t you? That’s brilliant,’ enthuses the woman, and I’m glad I’ve ticked all their boxes and given them a good story to tell their friends.

  ‘I only wish…’ the man says, hesitant, then presses on, ‘that it had been around for you guys. The Six. Suscutin.’

  ‘It was so sad when you broke up,’ says the woman.

  ‘It was. Have you two been together long?’

  ‘Eight years,’ she says. ‘Still going strong. Still in love.’ She glances under her lashes at him, a little unsure to speak for him in such a way perhaps, and he takes her hand and squeezes it. They are adorable. What a gift they have – ongoing love, with no expiration date. It’s impossible to understand why people want to shut down the laboratories, destroy the drugs, when it can offer this.

  Then I think of Gwen: her papery skin, her pain.

  ‘That’s amazing,’ I say. ‘Thanks, guys.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t need anything else?’

  I shake my head. ‘Do you mind if I leave my car parked here for a bit? I’d like to walk into the village and take a look around.’

  They are delighted to be of further help. They give me extensive directions, tilting their heads in time as they talk of the path to take.

  › • ‹

  It’s a short walk, and the fence runs along the length of the path for most of the way. Just before I reach a minimarket, the first shop of the village from this direction, the fence takes a ninety-degree turn and heads off across the Wiltshire fields. I can see a sparse strip of weed-ridden land in the distance that must have been a runway. The main laboratory buildings are hidden from view. There are a few warehouses I can see, but it’s impossible to tell if they are from the RAF days or are a new addition.

  I carry on past the minimarket, and reach a crossroads that I suspect is the closest thing the village has to a centre. There’s a bus stop, a pub, a Chinese takeaway. One of those little shops from which the faintest whiff of incense leaks, with dream catchers and tie-dyed dresses in the window. There are wind chimes hanging outside it, and they make no tinkling noise in this hot, dry afternoon: nothing stirs.

  So much for hordes of protestors, getting loud in the pub and destroying the churchyard.

  The act strikes me as incongruous – why would they choose the churchyard as their target? I see the short square belfry in the distance, on my left, and walk in its direction. It’s a pleasant stroll to St Michael’s sturdy walls. Sinking into the grass around it, at skewed angles, are old gravestones with lichen filling their grooves, making most of the names unreadable. I see no signs of obvious disturbance or vandalism as I take my time, weaving amid the stones. Why are the dead so restful? Soon Gwen will be dead, and quietened, serene, against her will. She was never meant to be such things.

  When she goes, perhaps my guilty conscience will die too. The result will be something neither of us deserve: peace.

  Around the back of the church are the new graves, black granite and white marble in the main, standing straighter because time has not marked them yet. These graves bear flowers: some fresh, some wilted, some no more than sticks in the dirt. One bears so many flowers that they overflow on to the grass and make a fat tail that snakes off to the treeline. The name upon the grey, veined marble stone is Petra. Petra Cross.

  So here she is, not cremated, left unburned, which is fitting. And here are her tributes. No wonder they come here and mess up the graveyard with their flowers. She’s still in the shade of Suscutin, and that must help to keep their hatred alive.

  The dates on the stone remind me there are only two days until the anniversary of her death. People gather on such anniversaries. Old friends come to pay their respects.

  I walk back to the pub and inquire after a room.

  ‘All booked up, sorry,’ says the man behind the bar, barely glancing at me. He’s taken me for a Petra disciple, I think. He hasn’t recognised me. It actually occurs to me to say, Do you know who I am? But thankfully that ridiculous instinct passes.

  I could find a bigger hotel and run the risk of becoming an object of interest to the staff, the other visitors, and maybe the newspapers if I’m unlucky.

  Howard would kill me.

  I know what he would want me to do, and – this is a first – I think maybe I want to do it too.

  I phone Liz.

  › • ‹

  Liz is always the least recognised of us. There’s something about her short brown hair and dark eyes, the five feet four of her, which blends into a crowd and renders her invisible. Her ability to stand in a queue and not get served for hours at a time was an ongoing joke with us all. She never received much fan mail, either. Elizabeth Stuck – the only celebrity who nobody knew about.

  It made me love her more. I told her once she should take to crime; she would never have been suspected, let alone caught. But of course she didn’t. When we all broke up she went back to her maiden name of Jones and became a team manager for one of the huge insurance companies that made their home in the centre of Swindon. The ongoing, faceless business of rules and targets
seemed to be made for her.

  Upon my arrival at her Swindon flat I sit down in a squashy armchair and she sits opposite, her hands in her lap.‘Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘No problem.’

  Being in the room with her is difficult. Not painful, but a little sore, and tender, like a new growth of skin over an old wound. We never did say goodbye to each other.

  She asks me how long I want to stay.

  ‘Just a couple of days. Is that okay?’

  ‘Of course. Howard said he was worried about you.’

  ‘You speak to him a lot?’

  ‘About once a week. Just to touch base. He phoned me last night.’

  Of course, he would phone Liz. The two of them were the oldest, and the most responsible. Her calmness penetrated us all to some degree, and I saw Howard drawing strength from her support, particularly at the end. It wasn’t a disguise on her part; she really was that chilled about it all. How, I don’t know.

  ‘It’s only because of these bloody pictures,’ I say, sinking further down into her squashy armchair. Everything in this small living room is either cream-coloured or a deep plum hue, and it’s so warm and airless in here, with the windows all sealed up tight. I could fall asleep in a moment.

  ‘The nude ones? He told me about them.’

  ‘You didn’t see them?’

  ‘I don’t do news,’ she says. ‘Besides, I’ve seen it all before.’

  Her life is suddenly clear to me. It’s a hibernation. Its warm soft stasis appeals at this moment, but it already contains a seed of repulsion that could easily germinate if I stayed here too long. It’s so peaceful. But it’s not living, not as I would want to live.

  ‘Good thinking,’ I say. ‘It’s all crap, anyway, all this mental health stuff.’

  ‘It’s really lovely to see you, Mik. It’s not just small talk, I promise, I know how you hate that. Seeing you reminds me that I didn’t make it all up. Sometimes the past feels like it didn’t happen to me, do you know what I mean? Forgive me, but I didn’t go and see the film you’ve been working on. It could only have made it seem more like someone else’s dream.’

  This sudden flow of words sounds rehearsed to me; if so, I’m glad I gave her the chance to say them in person.

  ‘That is so very okay, Liz. Everything you’ve done has always been okay with me.’

  How very formal this intimacy is, with timings and sentiments, like the steps of a waltz. All the things I loved about her are here, in the room with us. They are watching us carry out this dance.

  ‘I think,’ she says, leaning forward in her own armchair as the octagonal clock on the wall ticks, ‘that out of the six of us, we two did each other the least damage in the process of disengagement.’

  We never did argue, that’s true. We stepped around each other, and took sides in the others’ arguments. ‘Perhaps that’s because we didn’t want to hurt each other.’

  She shakes her head, and settles her clear gaze upon me. ‘It’s because we loved each other the least.’

  The certainty of her statement is unbearable. She has ranked our love and placed it bottom of the pile. I never once did such a terrible thing. It’s a sudden act of violence.

  ‘If that’s true for you,’ I say, with such delicacy, ‘it wasn’t the case for me.’

  For I loved her deeply, as I did all of us. She wasn’t who I went to for talking, true. It was the physicality we created between us that obsessed me, that made me curl up in her bed with her most nights, towards the end. When we made love she grew in stature and significance; she had a vocal tenderness that surrounded me, ensconced me. I let go of everything but her voice, coaxing me inside her. Soft, even waves of sound.

  And she loved me less.

  ‘I mean—’ She gestures, her fingers splayed, towards me, away from me. ‘We were less connected, somehow. Didn’t you feel that?’

  It’s overwhelming: the room, the sinking armchair, this lethargy. I have no strength left to pull myself up, to hide this hurt she’s causing. I can feel it on my face, visible to her.

  ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry,’ she pleads, and she gets up, comes to me, drapes herself over me. She sits on my lap and pulls my head against her chest, commanding the situation, yet moving just softly enough that I don’t resist. She says, hoarse and low, ‘I loved having you in me, I loved you, I loved you, Mik, but it was a love I could let go of. It’s not a bad thing that you didn’t break my heart, don’t you know that? It’s a good thing. It means I think of you most fondly, now. I care for you more now.’

  She has weighed and measured me, and now I let her comfort me for the shortcomings she has created.

  › • ‹

  It’s the only time we hug during my visit. Even when we say goodbye, and tell each other how good it was to spend time together, we don’t touch. We talk about the past throughout both evenings, but the stories we tell belong to the others.

  Do you remember the time Nicky tried to cook risotto and the saucepan caught fire?

  Howard and his pyjamas, folding them every morning, it was the unsexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

  Sunetra’s pot, it’s still there, can you believe it? Dan still keeps a spare key in it.

  This act of reliving it, filling in the memories between us to create a crude, piecemeal version of what was once our relationship, brings a level of closure I hadn’t ever imagined I would get.

  I feel done with it. The whole thing. I’m glad Suscutin wasn’t around back then. I’m glad I don’t have to go on loving her. She has learned to quantify everything that I want to keep immeasurable. By the end of my time in her cosy flat, I’m certain that I loved her least of all too.

  › • ‹

  In the churchyard once more, there’s a sense that so much time has passed since I was last here. How can that be? And yet my entire relationship, my Sixdom, has changed in my eyes, in my memory. I can’t begin to articulate its alteration. I feel different, deep down different. I feel fresh, vulnerable. Ready to be made over.

  I feel as if I’ve moulted.

  I take up my position on the bench beside the church wall in the early morning, and they come in a steady stream, often in threes and fours, approaching without particular reverence. I watch them chat as they lay flowers in a fantail that radiates out from her grave, thickening and stretching wider and wider.

  This isn’t as I imagined it; they don’t look like disciples. They gather, their numbers swelling, and they begin to talk louder about themselves. They turn their backs to the graves, and away from me.

  I’m glad I hold my own bunch of flowers, carnations, and am wearing sunglasses, and dark trousers with my sharp shirt. I’m acting too, pretending to be properly bereaved so I can observe in peace. It’s working. Some glance at me, but nobody pays me much attention.

  The morning passes, and still they assemble; I hear raised voices outside the graveyard every now and again. How does this end? With a celebration, or a riot? A news crew arrives and pushes its way through to Petra’s grave, training the eye of the camera on the flowers. The reporter, an older man, approaches one group. They speak animatedly to the lens, not to him. It’s powerful to watch.

  The crew, satisfied, leave. Midday approaches, and I’m starving. She isn’t coming. She isn’t coming. Why should she come? How would I know her, anyway?

  I should go to Devon. I should check on Gwen, and help her move into the hospice with the duck pond, and simply tell her that she should forgive herself, if that’s what it takes to be happy. I’m not cut out for this business of finding people and facilitating forgiveness.

  The churchyard is packed, and the sun is hot; I’m sweating even in the shade of the wall. The voices outside are louder, more strident. Perhaps the sun is to blame. I heard once that crowd disturbances, riots, they mainly happen in summertime. Few rebel during rainfall nowadays.

  Max could have silenced them. When he got annoyed on set, he used his trained voice to hold the crew to attention, but even he would have
had trouble cutting through the police sirens that are drawing closer. There aren’t small groups any more; there is a large crowd, and they are organising themselves, becoming more ordered in their outrage. The grave is forgotten entirely and the flower fantail is beingtrampled upon. I see people unfurl banners from their bags and shake them out, red paint on white cloth, and others unzip tops to reveal T-shirts underneath, bearing bold red lettering.

  A young woman, maybe a student, approaches me and holds out a T-shirt. She gets dragged back by the others; I catch the use of the word disrespectful. Then she is parted from her friends by an older woman with a worn leather pack on her back, pushing through, using one arm out straight in front of her to divide the crowd. People move aside for her as she heads for Petra’s grave.

  She stands on other people’s flowers, makes no attempt to avoid putting her feet upon them, and places one white rose on the top of the stone. She pats the marble with a familiar, weary gesture.

  I remember her.

  I saw her once, at Max’s estate. He was filming, he broke off to speak to her, and we lost the light for the rest of the day. Nothing more could be shot. She stuck in my mind, perhaps because of the way he approached her, with a gentleness that was at odds with the control he exhibited on set.

  Later, over beers in his luxurious living room, I said, ‘This is going to take ages if you break off a shot to speak to every hanger-on.’

  And he replied, ‘How do you know she was a hanger-on? You’re talking about the love of my fucking life, Mik.’ Then he smiled, I smiled, and he dealt cards for poker. There was a beer ready for Gwen, placed on the table; she’d gone to do her last sweep of the house for the evening.

  So here’s the love of Max Black’s life, the hanger-on, the person Gwen has to apologise to.