by Stuart Evers
‘I’m so stupid,’ Daphne says. ‘If he could see me now, like this, accusing you, the prick would laugh right in my face. I’m so sorry. So very sorry.’
The force of the word in the muggy kitchen, the wine sweat on the glasses. Two women close enough to smell their respective deodorants. The tears and the hidden face, the hair remaining still, lacquered perfectly, bouncing but not moving. Then Daphne up, as though suddenly inflated, back straight against the chair. Daphne takes a tissue from the metal box on the table, dabs at her eyes.
‘I can always tell when he’s at it,’ she says. ‘He thinks he’s discreet, but he might as well have it written on his face in lipstick.’
She blows her nose, quietly.
‘I hoped it was you,’ she says. ‘I did hope it was. I could rail at you. I could shout at you. I could forgive you. It would be okay if it were you. But I knew it wasn’t you. I knew that really.’
At table, she is still, her back dead straight, taking small and consistent sips of wine.
‘If I were betting, I’d say she was younger this time. Slip of a thing, most likely. A bit reticent in the bedroom, if you know what I mean. He always gets more amorous when there’s some little slut around.’
The venom and then again the tears; again the head against Gwen’s breast.
‘The last time, he gave me the crabs,’ she says. ‘Once he gave me the crabs and he said it wasn’t him, that I must have got it doing yoga or something. Accused me of having an affair.’
Gwen has heard this before, Daphne having told her several times of the crabs, the white lice itching her day and night. The doctor who looked at her like she was a whore or a bad wife, or both of those things at once.
Her tears are not slowing. A there, there, a shushing, same as she offers Nate, offers Annie. But nothing pure like that, no wish to take away the pain. Thinking of Ray, thinking she is as bad as Carter: supposing she could get away with it, believing herself undetectable. But having not done anything. Better to have done nothing, or the same as having done something?
‘What are you going to do?’ Gwen says.
Daphne looks up, somehow make-up still perfect, still no panda eyes, how expensive the eye make-up to leave no trace of tears. She smooths down her ruckled jacket.
‘I’m going to have another drink,’ she says. ‘You?’
‘I meant, what are you going to do about James?’
‘Oh what is there to do, dear?’ she says.
‘You could take a lover,’ Gwen says.
‘I’m not French, dear,’ she says. ‘Besides, who am I going to snare looking like this?’
She finally removes the cork, pours herself a large glass and tops up Gwen’s.
‘Have you ever done that?’ Daphne says. ‘Taken a lover? Truthfully?’
‘No,’ Gwen says.
‘You don’t look sure about that.’
‘I’m sure,’ Gwen says.
‘There’s something,’ she says. ‘I can feel it. Something delectable you’re just dying to tell me.’
They both laugh, so much laughter and so much booze and so much unsaid, evaded, quietly shared. Gwen imagines telling Daphne about the book, of Ray. How she would listen to it like a news item on the radio, ready to repeat the facts to someone later. Not for her that story, but something having to be given. Something offered up.
‘I was almost unfaithful,’ she says, ‘just the once, before we were married.’
A door. A door and the sound of feet on stairs and the door opening. Not thought about in many years. Not thought about ever. Hello, Old Nick. Long time no see.
‘Almost?’ Daphne says. ‘Please don’t get my hopes up just to dash them.’
‘He was an older man,’ she says. ‘A lot older.’
‘How old?’
‘In his sixties,’ she says. ‘Late sixties.’
Daphne splutters wine all over the counter, a grand spray of Chablis.
‘And how old were you?’
‘Twenty-one, twenty-two, something like that.’
‘You slept with a man forty years older than you?’
Inside the small flat, the place immaculately clean, as though he knew she was coming. A sitting room with the gas fire glowing umber, books on the shelves, some she’d handled. Wordsworth on the armchair, a pencil keeping his place. Him fetching tea, her sitting on the sofa, him asking her something and her nodding, and then standing, both of them, and him taking her to his study, the small room a chaos of proofs and papers and scribbles and scraps. Into his bedroom, an electric heater already on, pyjamas on a chair, folded, tartan.
‘I didn’t sleep with him,’ Gwen says. ‘I thought I was going to. I thought that was what I wanted. He put his hands on me, on my waist, and the touch was . . . light. His hands were gentle and they were shaking, in excitement or age, I don’t know. But he touched me and he moved to kiss me and we kissed and it was gentle and it was . . . light. And I kissed him back. And then I knew what I wanted. I wanted to say no. Not to run away, not to run away screaming, but just to say no. Calmly, gently. To say, this was nice, but I’m saying no. I wanted to prove I could do it. To be able to say no and mean it. So I said no.’
‘And what did he do?’ Daphne says, not looking at Gwen, looking well away, a story there, another memory not cared for, not recalled but dredged. A shallow-grave memory, just the brush from a boot, a dog’s snout, from discovery.
‘He kissed me on the cheek and said, “These things go better in books.”’
How cruel that seeming now, and yet no sense of wrongdoing. To play on Nick’s emotions, on Nick’s sense of his own worth, the elation of challenging the physical world. And then to crush that. Snuff it out. A change of heart. Like a dare. Like a child’s game.
Daphne looks up at her from the rim of her wine glass.
‘Am I supposed to feel sorry for him?’ Daphne says.
‘I don’t know,’ Gwen says. Yes. No. Who knows.
‘Because I don’t,’ Daphne says. ‘Not one fucking bit.’
4
On the ball and off the ball, Chris Birch. Shirt untucked, stockings down, Chris Birch. His thighs – man thighs, Tommy Smith thighs, Asa Hartford thighs – Chris Birch.
The ball bounces against his thigh, Chris Birch. He controls the ball, long legs striding out from the centre of midfield, Chris Birch. The speed of turn, head alert, looking up, Chris Birch. A shimmy, a step-over, and accelerating past the defender, skin flawless, genuinely flawless, Chris Birch.
Planting foot and striking the ball, Chris Birch. The ball spinning past the prone keeper and into the sighing net, Chris Birch. He does not celebrate, does not acknowledge his teammates, Chris Birch. He jogs back to the centre circle and in his deep voice tells his teammates to keep going, to pretend it’s still nil–nil, Chris Birch.
But it’s not nil–nil, Chris Birch, it’s six–nil and he has scored four of the goals, Chris Birch. The opposition know it, his teammates know it, he knows it: he is a player from another planet, Chris Birch.
He stands on the semi-circle, chalk marks on his boots, the best money can buy, the boots, the three white stripes, the same boots Asa Hartford wears, Chris Birch. He steals the ball from a midfielder and sprints off, looks up, weighs his decision, passes the ball wide right, Chris Birch. Wide right, Chris Birch. To you.
You run at the left-back, beat him, and look up, looking only for him, Chris Birch. You should shoot, but you square it to him, and he scores a goal, Chris Birch.
He does not celebrate, Chris Birch. He just stands still and points at you, his finger outstretched, Chris Birch. You, he is saying, you, no one else, but you, that’s what he’s saying, Chris Birch.
He jogs back to the centre circle and you do the same, having learned how to jog back to the centre circle from him, Chris Birch.
Later, he passes to you again, Chris Birch. At the death knell of the game, he passes the ball to you and you score and you do not wheel away in celebration, the way you would once h
ave done, but you stand your ground and point at him, and he nods and the two of you jog back to the centre circle almost in step, Chris Birch.
The whistle blows and the opponents are all heading towards him, to shake his hand, Chris Birch. They’re all thinking they’ll be able to say they played against him before he was famous, before he played for England, Chris Birch. You shake the hands of the opposition and they do not look at you the way they look at Chris Birch. The way you look at Chris Birch. And then he is gone, into the changing room, Chris Birch.
In a book of football stories you read most nights, there’s a story about two footballers, Archie and Glenn: brilliant when they play together; terrible if the other’s not on the field. They have a kind of telepathic connection, and sometimes you think it’s the same with you and Chris Birch: that he’s the player he is because you’re on the field with him. In the story, Archie gets injured and is forced to retire and on the same day Glenn retires too.
‘People always ask Glenn why he retired,’ the story ends, ‘and he just tells them it wasn’t the same without Archie. People wonder what might have been. The heights they could both have reached. But Glenn knows. They both do.’
*
It is a returning, the moments after a game: a settling of the blood. All outcomes now achieved, the facts established. A league position set in stone, a points tally unarguable. Nate is different off the pitch, the world is different off the pitch. It is more languid; there is less at stake. There is Chris Birch in the shower; there is hair on Chris Birch in all the adult places.
‘No scout today?’ Nate says, pushing the button for the shower, the cold needlepoint spray on his body.
‘Not as I could see,’ Chris Birch says. ‘Maybe next week, Bobby.’
They call him Bobby, after Bobby Moore. Sometimes Dazzler, sometimes Daz. Only an accident him playing with the under-fourteens, playing with Chris Birch: a player dropping out late last season and Nate at the playing fields having a kick-around and only him tall enough, strong enough, good enough to play with the team, and no one afterwards caring he was a year or two junior.
Chris Birch finishes his shower, wraps a towel around himself. The game a waste now, a waste if no one sees Nate and Chris Birch play together. A scout might come for Chris Birch, but they’d also see something in Nate – not as obvious, somewhat raw, but something – and enquire afterwards about him. They would come for Chris Birch but they’d take Nate along too.
On the way out of the Portakabin, Nate sees his team’s manager talking to Chris Birch’s father and a man Nate doesn’t recognize. Chris Birch is just ahead of Nate, and the manager calls Chris over, and the man Nate doesn’t know puts his hand on Chris’s shoulder. They look excited, all save Chris Birch who looks at the laces in his trainers. Nate walks past them. He hears the word City. He hears the word scout. He hears the word trial. Chris Birch nods as if this is to be expected. Chris Birch meets Nate’s eye, but he does not beckon Nate over, does not introduce him to the scout. Nate slows, but no one calls his name.
In the car park, his father is looking at his watch.
‘Come on,’ his father says. ‘Time’s ticking.’
Nate says nothing, just gets into the car.
‘You scored a goal,’ his father says as he starts the car. ‘I saw it.’
‘I could have scored a hat-trick, it wouldn’t have mattered,’ Nate says. ‘The scout didn’t show again.’
To say it might make it true. Make it true.
His father looks at him, no sympathy, a placating face, condescendingly his father’s.
‘I expect they want to see that Chris Birch against better opposition than them lot,’ his father says.
5
Rumour is that his parents committed suicide; rumour is that they were found in a Volvo by the lake at Rudyard. Rumour is that they didn’t leave a note, just their house and only son behind. Rumours are that their son was once a talented artist, a talented musician, a talented scientist, a talented fly-half; rumour is that now he’s alarmingly obese, practically welded to a long leather couch. Rumour is there was a party the day after his parents’ funeral; rumour is that the party’s never stopped. Rumour is that he listens to Abba’s ‘Fernando’ all day long; rumour is that Fernando’s front door is always open: all you need is the address.
It has taken Lissa a month to get the address; a mission undertaken solo and without Anneka’s knowledge. Lissa will not say who gave it to her; will not say what she did to get hold of it: three times Anneka has asked, and three times she has been denied.
‘I got the address,’ Lissa said the last time. ‘What does it matter how I got it?’
Anneka agreed. What does it matter? But Anneka thinks it does matter. Secrets matter. A refusal to share matters. Not knowing matters. Not knowing of what Lissa is capable matters. The things she’s imagined her doing – blow jobs, tit wanks, shitting on a glass table with a man beneath it – matter. The acts Lissa has performed just to find the location of a party.
What does it matter how, now they are in a minicab, the windows wound down on the dark fields and shedding trees, the driver’s eye in the rear-view trying to look beyond the slashes in Lissa’s shirt to the skin where straps and cups should be.
‘You’re such a stiff,’ Lissa said as they were getting ready in her bedroom. ‘You’re so straight.’
‘Just because I want to wear a bra?’ Anneka said. ‘Just because I don’t want everyone looking at my tits?’
‘It’s just a fucking bra, Neka,’ Lissa said. ‘Don’t be so uptight.’
New words these: Stiff and Straight and Uptight replacing Boring and Immature and Stupid as the most irredeemable of sins. On their first day of sixth-form college the head of year told the assembled students they were not yet sixth-formers, just fifth-years who’d had a holiday; but it wasn’t true of Lissa. Her summer had been taken in study of what to wear, what to say, the best way to blend in and stand out. It was like having two friends at once; one just met; the other close as blood and bone. Melissa the girl she has confided in these last four years; Lissa now, in her slashed white shirt, ripped jeans, leather jacket and boots, lighting another cigarette.
‘You two off to a fancy dress party?’ the taximan says. They both ignore him, Lissa studiously; Anneka as though she can’t hear him over the sound of the wind and engine.
In the taxi, Anneka considers all the possible deaths, all the possible indignities, the night could yet bring. Murdered by the taximan. Dumped in Rudyard Lake. Sold into the white slave trade. Enforced prostitution; a drug overdose in a Manchester squat. Abducted, battered and left for dead, no one ever to know. Where were they going? When will girls learn? When will you learn, Annie? When will you understand I only have your safety at heart?
The trouble she is courting, the sanction if she is caught, and for what? For Lissa? Yes, perhaps for her. To keep pace with her, not to lose her. But for herself too, for the new iteration of her. Neka at college. Introduced as Neka, even the tutors calling her Neka. Neka looking forward to the party as Anneka hopes they never find the address. Neka wanting to know if the rumours are true as Anneka prays for quiet retreat back to Lissa’s house, uncaught and yet still with the thrill of transgression.
The taxi pulls up outside a wall and a gate, nothing either side but field. No sound of music, no sense of habitation, no obvious structure even.
‘Here you are,’ the driver says. ‘You’re sure you’ve got the right address?’
‘Yes,’ Lissa says.
Lissa hands over the fare and the driver juggles with the money, touching her hand, her wrist, eyes on her shirt, coins spilling in his lap. A ten-pence piece lands in the footwell, dull against the shine of Lissa’s boots.
‘It won’t pick up itself,’ the driver says. A routine of some years’ standing, a tip at the end of the ride. Nipples seen; cleavage viewed.
‘That it won’t,’ Lissa says and gets out of the car.
Anneka wants to pick up t
he coin, make nice, make excuses; they might need him to pick them up, might need to rely on him for an alibi or some such. It is the first taxi she has taken; he is the first taximan she has met. He looks like all the things her father has said about taximen. The way they take advantage, the way they are not to be trusted, driving around all day, stuck in their own thoughts. An unhealthy profession, a lonely trade. Does bad things to people.
It is a coin, just a coin, nothing more. She picks it up and hands it to him. He does not offer any kind of thanks, just flicks it into the ashtray with the other change.
She gets out of the car, heads towards Lissa. She walks but wants to turn, to check the taximan has not got out of the car, is not approaching them with bat or brick or spanner. There is a murderer at loose. Somewhere up north. Perhaps he has come south to kill again.
The taximan sounds his horn, even Lissa jumps.
‘Oi,’ the taximan shouts through his wound-down window. ‘Try not to get raped, you jailbait slags.’
And then gone, fan-belt whine into the dark, and the two of them there, alone in the silence, not even a house to walk towards.
Lissa takes a long drag on her cigarette, a true smoker already, another thing studied over the holidays. In the late light, she looks wintry; as though dressed for sleet. Anneka is wearing Lissa’s clothes, but on her they feel ill-considered, underinformed. Lissa knows what her clothes actually say; Anneka just mimes the same words.
‘You’re sure about this?’ Anneka says.
‘It’s the right house,’ Lissa says.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Go home if you want,’ Lissa says. ‘But I’m not going anywhere.’
‘I can’t even see a house.’
‘It’s just over there,’ she says, looking up the hill, past bushes and hedges.
‘Just stay close to me, okay?’ Anneka says. ‘Don’t go running off and leaving me.’
‘I won’t, Neka,’ she says. ‘Promise.’
They walk the scrub path up the incline, too riven with thought and counter-thought to talk. Will they both laugh when they arrive at nothing? Will Lissa be furious at the busted transaction? They walk and Anneka wants to hold Lissa’s hand, Hansel-and-Gretel-like, but Lissa is already striding up the hill, hair wildly backcombed and ill-tempered.