by Stuart Evers
Woven in Fabric
1984
Sunday 23 September
1
There was summer in the late September morning; Sunday sunlight through an unhitched curtain hook, a square of pale just below his crossed feet. Neka placed her hand on his bicep, her skin pale as the square on the bed, his skin dark as the curtains. She’d promised not to do this; it made him uncomfortable, he said, the laying on of hands; it made him angry. He used words like fetishized. He used words like slave. He used words like dark meat. Later, he would apologize; say sometimes he said things he didn’t mean, though she knew he meant exactly what he said. She promised not to touch him that way, but while he slept she’d put her hand on his skin and leave it there. He only caught her again the once. Caught her white-handed. A long jag that, some home truths coming.
‘You only do this to scare daddy,’ he’d said.
‘I don’t have a daddy to scare,’ she’d replied.
‘There’s always a daddy,’ he’d said. ‘For women like you, there’s always a daddy.’
She took her hand away now, imagining her leaving her fingerprints on him. It was the third night in three he’d shared her bed; a pattern emerging. It would not be long before it was broken. A few weeks and something would happen. She would upset him; he would upset her. They would fight, scream in the street, slam late-night doors, throw abuse through open windows. There would be weeks of silence, then one would make an apologetic approach, rhythmic as the tides, and they would both fall back into bed.
*
Cities are composed of conductors and soloists; soloists, if lucky, introduced to a conductor soon after arrival. Conductors exist to show the places that define their city; to reveal streets that become your streets, bars that become your bars, clubs that become your clubs. In this they revel, in this they dance. But they need a soloist; a soloist casts the city anew, shows it afresh through their eyes. Without conductors, the city is soulless, sprawling, sharp and empty, impossible to truly know. Those who do not love a city are those who never found their conductor.
Robin was there the night after Neka arrived at Lissa’s, in the first-floor sitting room of Lissa’s student house, holding a can of beer, dressed in a slimly cut suit, a black turtle neck, suede boots the colour of beach. An outfit of outrageous nostalgia. Neka was still dressed in her bedclothes. She sat in the cigarette-burned armchair, tried to cover herself, tried for invisibility, as Robin spoke to Gaynor and Kate, Lissa’s housemates.
‘Some of his followers call him John Frum,’ Robin said. ‘Some call him Tom Navy. Some say he’s black, some say he’s white. What they all agree on, though, is that during the war, an American GI came to their tiny island with all these modern miracles. Guns and walkie-talkies and I don’t know what else. Their minds were blown, and so they decided he must be a god of some kind. A god! And now they want independence and their own nation state, free to worship this mythic American GI. They’ve built runways to encourage him to come back, too. They think he’ll return, like Jesus or something. It’s insane.’
Kate and Gaynor nodded. Lissa had said Neka would like Robin, even if he never did shut up. Listening to him talk to two uninterested women, she liked him well enough.
‘I read about that,’ Neka said.
‘Insane, right?’ Robin said.
‘I think it’s logical,’ she said. ‘If you’ve never seen a gun or a walkie-talkie before, never even conceived of such things, what are you going to think? You’re going to think magic. You’re going to think divinity. You’re going to worship something with that kind of power.’
‘Better to worship than to fear its wrath?’ he said.
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘It works for every other religion, doesn’t it?’
He nodded and pulled on his can.
‘You’re Nico?’ he said.
‘Neka,’ she said.
‘Coming to the Mayflower, Neka?’ he said.
‘Maybe,’ she said.
She took a quick, spiteful shower; the water warm then cool, never getting to hot. The bathroom was filthy, hair-clogged and mildewed, the sink, bath and toilet cracked and unclean. The smell worse than farm, than her brother’s bedclothes.
In her room, Lissa was blow-drying her hair: a new cut, a flicked bob.
‘Try the black dress,’ Lissa said over the sound of the hairdryer. ‘It’ll look good on you.’
Neka went to the wardrobe, took out a dress roughly the same age as her. Short, a collar at the neck, black buttons running down its front. She racked through the other dresses, similar vintage, similar styles. Gone now the rips and slashes in jeans and T-shirts; instead nostalgic elegance, a resurgent formality. Neka put on underwear and then the dress, zipped its back with a fumble, checked herself in the mirror.
She looked like she’d not only left home, but also her own time. There was something safe in that: to go back rather than forward; to slam on brakes, to stand and feel that a better, more artful era surrounded her. She pulled on a pair of Lissa’s black tights, a pair of Lissa’s shoes.
‘Perfect,’ Lissa said. ‘Told you it’d look good on you. Now, let me do your make-up.’
A conductor and her soloist. One of many.
*
Robin snored lightly, rolled over onto his front. Neka got out of bed and went to the bathroom. It smelled of bleach and Jif, the small mirror wiped clean of toothpaste spits, the chrome taps’ just-installed sparkle against white porcelain. Lissa’s nerves expressed as household chores. A job interview, details sketchy, some time on Friday and then to her parents’ for the weekend. The water in the toilet was still blue; the lino had been mopped. Grown-up, this cleaning; Lissa’s ambition there to see.
Neka knew she should make plans, should think about getting qualifications, should think about a job that wasn’t admin and service. Knew that she was behind her contemporaries, was idling as they sped. Lissa’s voice, her father’s voice. Urging her to think ahead, to think of the future, think of herself. Deaf to those voices now. Deaf and defiant.
‘Shift starts in forty-five minutes,’ Robin shouted from the other side of the door.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘What time will you be back?’
‘After shift.’
‘I’ll cook then.’
‘There’s no need. I might go out with Lissa. Depends when she gets back.’
‘So you won’t be back after shift?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Depends on Lissa.’
‘You going to be much longer in there?’
‘Give us a sec,’ she said. She ran the bath, let herself out and Robin closed the door behind him.
In the bedroom, she looked through the curtains, down onto Hartington Road, some kids messing around on bikes. She watched them for a time, their mute laughter and mock fights, the chrome dazzling in the sun. Liked the boys from this vantage; hated them on the street. The things they said were vile for lads barely in their teens.
Robin’s arms around her then, big arms around her narrow shoulders.
‘Bath’s almost run,’ he said. ‘Give me a ring later, let me know what you’re doing.’
‘I will,’ she said. Then stopped.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Actually I’m not going to work. Fuck it. Day’s too nice to be waiting tables.’
She turned and saw the delight; let him believe this change of heart was all down to him. Perhaps it was. She called in sick, put on her best weak and incapacitated voice, then took her bath.
Clean, pinked from the heat of the water, Neka slipped back under the blankets. She put her arms around Robin, the more of him now than when they’d met; lugs of flesh on his hips, a tum forming, too much drink. She put her hands on his biceps, she bit his earlobe. She pulled at the scrappy hairs on his chest, tight coils, springing back when released. She disappeared under the blankets, took him in her mouth, him unwashed and almost unwilling, the tang of it in her mouth, enjoying the surprise of him getting hard
er, enjoying the mischief of it. Not what she should be doing. Not the kind of girl she was; but certainly now the kind of woman she was.
His hands were on her head, not pushing, not pulling, but resting there. Little licks on the softness of the head, the way he liked it. She stopped and rolled over. At first he said he didn’t like it that way. A political reason, he said. The same way he’d at first stopped her from sucking him, saying it made her subservient. She’d soon changed his mind on both.
She touched herself while he slowly moved inside and out of her. Furtive this: he did not like that she needed manual stimulation. But she touched herself whether he realized or no. She felt him climax inside her, the shoot and spray of it, and they lay there, both in a cycle of spasm and release, muscles like gears and cogs, his mouth at her ear, kissing her neck and shoulder.
‘So what do you want to do now that you’re playing hooky?’ he said.
‘That,’ she said. ‘Again and again.’
‘You don’t mean that,’ he said. ‘I wish you did, but you don’t.’
‘I sort of do,’ she said. ‘I think I’d like it.’
‘It’s still sunny out.’
They both looked up to the unhitched piece of curtain, the light stronger now, closer to midday.
‘We could go for a picnic in the park,’ she said. ‘Make the most of it before it’s all rain and cold.’
He stroked her hair.
‘It’ll be nice,’ she said. ‘Perfect in fact. I’ll get a bottle of sangria.’
‘Sangria?’
‘Like in the song.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Perfect Day.’
*
Outside St Bede’s they stopped to hear the gospel for a moment, the joyousness against the dirt streets and the smutty brick. They walked on, hand in hand, and an old man, skin white as parchment, came in the opposite direction. He wore Sunday best, a hat. He saw them, looked at them both, and tipped the brim of his trilby as he walked past. Rob nodded and the man nodded back.
‘You know him?’ Neka said.
‘No,’ Rob said. ‘Never seen him before in my life.’
At the off-licence they bought crisps and nuts, a couple of Yorkie bars.
‘Mate, you got any sangria?’ Robin asked. ‘We really fancy some sangria.’
‘Fuck off to Spain then,’ the man said: accent broad Scouse; face Indian subcontinent.
‘Do you have any though?’ Neka said. ‘I know it’s a long shot, but we woke up this morning thinking sangria was what we wanted.’
‘You even know what sangria is?’
They looked at each other.
‘Wine and orange juice,’ the man said. ‘And it’s bloody disgusting if you ask me. Get a bottle of red, some orange juice, mix it up and there you go. Wine’s there. Orange there. There’s paper cups there too.’
The man watched them as they picked out the items; Neka now unsure why anyone’s perfect day would include diluted wine. They paid and the man behind the counter opened the wine using a corkscrew attached to the cigarette display. He passed over the bottle and smiled.
‘Make the most of the sunshine,’ he said.
*
They entered the gates, rounded the obelisk and headed towards the large trees under which they would shade, the familiar clockwise progression around the expanse of grass. She’d first walked Sefton Park in the aftermath of a snowstorm a few days after arriving at Lissa’s flat. She walked it in a loop, lap after lap, seeing her boot-prints melt in the snow. It became ritual. She could get lost in bars, take the bus to the city, trash about in clubs, but the park became a place of deeper solace, of retreat. There she heard voices. Her father and mother, her brother, Thomas. A battleground of sorts. She’d murdered Thomas there often; she’d thrown accusations at her father; slapped her mother. In the park, she’d replayed the bunker so many times its memory had lost its power.
It was in the park that she’d kissed Robin for the first time; a few moments later told him she loved him. Almost three years of friendship hung in that moment. Three years she’d spent in icy celibacy; fending off men, fending off women. No interest, none at all, and then the low level pulse of interest, the returning feeling of desire. She allowed a man to kiss her. She allowed another man to share a bed with her, but not to see her naked. She did these things without Robin around. Testing herself, seeing how far she was willing to go. And then ready. Not looked back since.
They stopped at their usual spot, not far from the ruined glass of the Palm House. She spread down a picnic blanket and she opened the crisps and he poured the wine and orange juice. It looked musty, red and cloudy. The light was so bright she wished she’d brought sunglasses. They tipped their plastic cups together.
‘Chin, chin,’ he said.
She sipped the drink. It was summer and heaven and all things in between, simultaneously disgusting and delicious.
‘It’s . . .’ he said.
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ she said.
They read books in the shade of the tree, distracted, both of them, by the lives around them, the giggles and screams of children. Screams of children in delight, in tantrum, in pain when falling, all sounding the same. No clouds in the skies, no aeroplanes or vapour trails. She saw herself give a bottle to a baby; Rob kick a ball to their son; swing their daughter around by her arms. A safe space, the park. No chance of exposure. Just looking at the people playing. Not thinking. Not imagining. Not prognosticating.
‘More sangria?’ Robin said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘More sangria.’
He poured the wine and added the juice.
‘We should go see a movie too,’ he said. ‘In keeping with the sangria.’
‘I think I’d fall asleep,’ she said. ‘Anyway, wouldn’t we also have to go to the zoo?’
‘I’m not feeding any animals,’ he said.
He ran his fingers through her hair, the short cut she was growing out again.
‘I used to come here to fight demons,’ she said. ‘Used to walk the whole place round. It was green but it was ugly. I’d look at people and think they were my mother, my father. I’d be fucking spitting with rage.’
She took a sip of the sangria.
‘I miss my brother,’ she said.
And it was true, at that moment. As Rob played with her hair, she missed Nate and his low honk laugh and his foot smell and his quiet smile.
‘It feels good,’ she said. ‘To miss him. Like something’s changed. Like . . . something altered.’
‘You could write to him,’ he said.
‘I don’t miss him that much,’ she said. ‘Just seeing the boys playing football. Makes me wonder if he’s still playing. Another person now, I expect. A whole other person.’
‘I don’t know how you do it,’ he said.
‘Do what?’
‘Not have him in your life.’
Robin had once said that all belief was hardwired. That no amount of evidence, empirical or otherwise, could shake that faith. For some it was religion, for some politics; for Rob it was the primacy of family. Robin’s family was large, with branches and orders distributed around the globe like missionaries. They threw parties for returning cousins and aunts up and down the country, celebrated Christmas in Robin’s mother’s terrace in Kidderminster, the downstairs rooms packed as nightclubs. Neka told everyone her parents were dead. A car crash. A lie easier than the truth. Her brother she could not kill off, however. She couldn’t seem to do that to Nate.
‘Does it bother you?’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Does it bother you that I don’t talk to my brother?’
‘You said you had your reasons,’ he said. ‘I respect that.’
‘There’s always reasons, Rob. Always justifications. It depends on what side you see it. Does it worry you?’
‘What?’ he said.
‘That I might leave you like I left him.’
He adopted the considered pause of deep thought. Same as when
the kids in his community group asked him difficult, adult questions.
‘It crosses my mind, from time to time, yes.’
She watched the families pick up their belongings, fold picnic blankets, ruffle hair, buckle sandals, put on coats, load up buggies. She’d once had plans. London or something. Birmingham perhaps. Some terrible plans to Interrail Europe. Job though. Money though. Lissa though. Of late, Robin though. Plans, so many forgotten.
‘Would it help if we moved in together?’ she said. ‘Would that make a difference?’
She felt the fingering of her hair stop, his pause.
‘Move in with you and Lissa?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just the two of us.’
His look of surprise and shock, the calculation of it: a test, perhaps, yes.
‘Are you serious?’
‘When am I not?’
So easy, words. So easy, out of the mouth, as though decided and binding, but unthought, ill-considered, no way to take them back. All the progress in the world and this never changing, the contract of unintended words. She felt giddy, unnerved by her actions: her father’s voice telling her to take it slowly, to be careful.
No. No care. Careless. Care less. In the park, on a perfect day, why not be carefree and do something rash without due consideration?
Robin was giddy too. They talked of the kind of place they would live – a terraced house, a basement flat. Somewhere light and airy; somewhere dark and cosy – until the light dimmed and dusked. When the sangria ran out, they walked to the Albert on Lark Lane, a quick pint in the smoke of the boozer, the old men at the bar, then home, skittering drunk in the now-dark streets, detouring for fish and chips, eating them from the paper, the salt and vinegar on their fingers, the steam rising from the paper.
The house lights burned inside as they let themselves in, all of them lit. Not to tell Lissa tonight. To give her a night and then tell her in the morning. Neka called for her, but it was clear she was in the living room, the television up as loud as possible. They inched inside and in the living room Lissa was sitting hugging her knees to her chest, crying, a bottle of gin beside her.