The Bench

by Saskia Sarginson

  ‘I’ve got a rubber in my pocket,’ he pants. ‘Do you want to put it on?’

  My mind is blank. ‘On … me?’

  He bursts out laughing, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll do it.’

  And immediately I understand my stupid mistake, but it doesn’t matter. I laugh too, we’re both laughing, and he’s rolling the damn thing on, and telling me to stop, because he has to concentrate.

  We’re kissing as we embrace, tipping one way and another.

  The other occasions were nothing like this. I rise to the joy of his fingers and tongue inside me, the slide of his legs and arms against mine, setting my skin alight. It’s impossible to stay quiet. I can’t stop myself crying out.

  We lie panting and slick with sweat, limbs spread-eagled as if we’ve been dropped like puppets from space. The tiles are itchy beneath my bare buttocks. I shift onto my hip. I want to tell him that I love him, love him, love him. Instead, I bury my mouth in the hollow of his collarbone, lick the salt from his skin. ‘Think I have carpet burns,’ I murmur.

  ‘Me too.’ He reaches around and fumbles with our clothes, dragging his sweatshirt and my jacket over us, tucking them around our chests. His fingers brush my stomach, pausing over my scar. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘I had a ruptured appendix when I was eight,’ I tell him.

  ‘A ruptured appendix? But … you could have died, couldn’t you?’ He moves his head downwards, and I hold my breath while he kisses the jagged line across my belly.

  When we’re settled in each other’s arms, I say, ‘I nearly did. It was touch-and-go. Must have been hard on my parents. They’d already lost their baby son. I don’t remember much.’

  He lets out a long sigh. ‘I’m very thankful to the person who saved your life.’ Then he waves his arm above his head, calling loudly, ‘Whoever you are, wherever you are – THANK YOU!’

  I shush him, laughing, my hand over his mouth. ‘Crazy. You’ll wake the dead!’

  ‘Wish I could be a surgeon. Save lives. That’s something, isn’t it?’

  ‘Music saves lives too,’ I tell him. ‘The right song at the right time. It could make all the difference to someone.’

  He squeezes me closer. ‘You never told me who Frank is.’ His voice rumbles through his chest, vibrating in my ear. ‘The name in the inscription?’

  ‘He was my brother,’ I say quietly. ‘The son my parents lost. I never met him. He died before I was born. But,’ I swallow, ‘he’s in my head all the time. I hear his voice talking to me.’

  ‘Like … an imaginary friend?’

  I nod. ‘I must have invented his voice at some point, ages ago, and then it kind of took on a life of its own. He feels very real to me. Sometimes I wish he’d shut up.’ I peer up at his face. ‘Do you think I’m mad?’

  ‘No.’ He smiles. ‘You needed him. And you found a way to answer that need.’ He sweeps a strand of hair from my forehead. ‘I think it’s great that you still have Frank with you.’

  I put my head back on his chest.

  ‘Has he … said anything about me?’ Sam asks in a voice laced with slight anxiety.

  I smile. ‘That would be telling.’ I poke him between his ribs.

  ‘I see what you’re doing here,’ he says, tickling me. ‘Two against one. That’s not fair.’

  I’m laughing, but tears prick my eyes, and I feel them spill silently onto my cheeks, running along the side of my nose. I don’t know why I’m crying. He’s leaving soon, but it’s not just that. We’ve only had two days together, I tell myself. You can’t love him. But I think I always knew that I did, from the moment I saw him standing on the boardwalk being polite to a couple of tourists.

  TEN

  Sam, April 1983

  The summer holidays let him escape the misery of school for six long weeks. Days opened their wings like butterflies, everything a dazzle of colour and light: spending afternoons with Ben, his friend from the village, poking about in the woods with sticks, building dens and coming home for tea, Mattie and Elle grinning at him from the other side of the table. His father worked up in town during the week, so it was just his mother and sisters at home, the Great Danes slobbering and farting.

  Sundays, they had a family pew right at the front of St Mary the Virgin church. He sat with his sisters on a hard bench, his collar rubbing his neck and his shoes laced tight. While the priest droned on from the pulpit, Sam pinched his wrist in an effort not to daydream. Being at boarding school had taught him about power, about the body language of those who had it, and those who didn’t. When their family climbed into the Daimler to go home, the priest raised his hand in a special blessing, and the people in the churchyard dipped their heads as the long black car passed by; all except Ben, who stuck out his tongue.

  During lunch, slices of roast beef eaten at a white tablecloth, his father tested him on the contents of the sermon. If Sam got an answer wrong, his father rapped his knuckles with a knife. ‘I’m not spending a fortune on your education for you to be a slacker and a fool,’ he said. ‘An Englishman is a leader.’ The dogs, waiting hopefully on the floor, whimpered. Dropping slivers of bloody gristle into their jaws, his father kept on with his own sermon: ‘A decent man leads a life to be proud of.’

  That child – the one in Sam’s memories – is growing fainter, disappearing like a figure seen in brilliant sunshine, edges blurring until he’s swallowed by the light. But his father’s voice will not shut up. Sam can’t waste any more time thinking about him. He only wants to fill his mind with her – Cat – with what they did last night, with the weighted substance of her bones, the flawed beauty of her golden skin, the mole on her right buttock, the crease above her lip when she smiled her gap-toothed smile. He hasn’t felt that connected to another human being since … He runs through the relationships he’s had, and realises that he’s never felt it, not with anyone else. Not even with Lucinda, not even at the beginning, in Oxford.

  They were in the same production of Romeo and Juliet at university. He was playing Mercutio; she was producing the show. She was frighteningly efficient even then, all five foot nothing of her. Everyone was in awe. He was flattered at first, when she showed interest in him. Once they started going out, he recognised how her need for perfection hid her fear of not being taken seriously. But when she let her guard down, she could be funny and sweet. He liked being the only one who knew the real Lucinda. Nobody else got close; she was too good at keeping her guard up.

  Her face floats before him now, looking at him; her mouth, bright in her trademark Chanel scarlet, turns down, disappointed again. It’s an expression he’s come to know well. When did they become different people? And why didn’t they understand before? It’s been obvious for ages that they’d be better off apart. He feels bad about her, about the timing of things, but he can’t regret meeting Cat. He still hasn’t plucked up the courage to explain about Lucinda, and the longer he leaves it, the more impossible it feels. He’s afraid of ruining the time they have left together.

  He counts the days on his fingers, and knows there are not enough.

  Levi and the Dutch giants leave for home, poorer for their nights at the casino, but implacably cheerful. Levi clasps Sam’s hand. ‘So, you never got to New Orleans, buddy?’ he says. ‘I heard you singing the other afternoon. That was your own song, right?’ He gives Sam a keen look. ‘I think you’ve fallen for someone?’

  ‘I have.’ Sam grins.

  Levi winks. ‘Good luck to you, man. Come and see me in Friesland some day.’ He turns at the door. ‘By the way, I liked your music.’ He nods, suddenly serious. ‘Yeah, man. Very cool.’

  Sam sings with the band every night, with Cat watching from behind the backstage curtain. They return to the funeral parlour to have sex on those floor tiles again, and once on top of the mahogany desk, scattering leaflets, knocking into a vase of lilies so that pollen flies everywhere, making him sneeze. When she’s not working, they walk the watery edges of the city, the beaches and inlets. They sit on her
favourite bench, gazing out at the ocean and talking, talking; they have a picnic at Absecon Bay, watching the fishermen catch bluefish, the arc of a bridge spanning the width of river in an elegant hooped line. He comes to appreciate the old painted clapboard houses and wide avenues of the wealthier areas, and to love the tawdry reality of the poorer ones with their laundromats, plus-size shops and barber salons with Lowest Prices in South Jersey plastered across nearly every window.

  When Cat is at work, he’s got into the habit of sitting on his bunk with his guitar, composing songs. Every one of them inspired by her. He thinks of her face while his fingers move across the fretboard, how her features change depending on the time of day or her mood, so that sometimes her face is gentle, as he imagines a nun might look, and other times she seems lit from inside by a burning light, so radiantly, fiercely beautiful that it hurts him. He loves her crazy dress sense – jumbling colours like she’s raided a dressing-up box – the fact that she’s not afraid to be different. He loves that she’s got a childish sense of humour, that when she laughs, she snorts. He loves that she finds joy in ordinary things. Then there’s her unwavering moral compass – admittedly daunting, but in the end, central to who she is. He’s never written love songs before, never felt the need. But these songs are clamouring for his attention, rising up in him almost ready-made. He doesn’t share them with her, in case she finds them soppy, and because they’re not good enough. Not yet. Not for her.

  ELEVEN

  Cat, April 1983

  Ray has been to the airport to collect a body. An American woman from AC who married an Englishman. She’s to be buried at Our Lady Star of the Sea.

  The woman has been embalmed in London and she’s arrived snug in her coffin. It’s a half-view casket of polished dark wood with brass fittings. The family want a public viewing at the service. Ray opens the panel, the oiled hinge releasing with a heavy clunk, and leans over to check that all is as it should be. He scrutinises her face intently. ‘Nice work,’ he admits. ‘Very natural-looking.’ He turns to me. ‘Take a look, Catrin. A real professional job.’

  The front door rings and he goes to answer it. I step up to the coffin. Ray’s right. Whoever the embalmer was, he or she was an artist. The woman looks as though she’s sleeping peacefully. What Ray didn’t tell me was how beautiful she is, this dead woman. She’s pale with neat features, long dark hair framing her face in glossy bangs, her small, shapely lips flushed ruby red. It looks as though she might open them to speak. I find myself leaning closer to listen for the sound of her breathing. She makes me think of fairy tales where a princess lies sleeping in a glass coffin, until the prince kisses her awake.

  When Ray touches my shoulder, I jump.

  ‘I need you for this funeral,’ he says. ‘We’re supplying pallbearers. You’ll ride with me in the hearse, okay?’

  ‘Oh, but I have it in the book that I get this weekend off,’ I tell him. ‘I have a … a friend here. He’s … he’s leaving soon.’

  ‘Sorry, Cat.’ He closes the viewing panel. ‘Can’t do without you. It’s only a few hours on Saturday.’

  My insides clench with frustration. ‘But it’s important, Ray,’ I plead. ‘He’s important.’

  ‘Didn’t I just know there was a man involved?’ Ray sucks his teeth and looks sorrowful. ‘Losing your head like a chicken.’ He winks. ‘Tell you what, child. You can leave straight after it’s over.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I incline my chin towards the coffin. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Elizabeth,’ he says. ‘Elizabeth Dunn. That was her married name. She was an O’Reilly originally.’

  The O’Reillys are the nearest we get to aristocracy in this part of the world. They own the Atlantic and Liberty hotels.

  Ray taps the coffin. ‘Got to get this one right.’

  ‘I have to work this weekend,’ I tell Sam. ‘It’s the funeral of a woman who belongs to an influential family here. I’m sorry.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Just part of Saturday. I’ll be free by the end of the afternoon.’

  He holds me tightly, presses his mouth against my hair. ‘I’ll meet you when you’ve finished,’ he says. ‘I’m not singing at the club any more. They’ve found a new frontman.’

  ‘Come to the Our Lady of the Sea, at about four o’clock?’

  Sam nods. ‘Was she very old, this woman?’

  ‘No. She was young. And lovely. She was married as well.’

  ‘Damn,’ Sam says softly, wrapping his arms tighter around my waist.

  It’s raining on Saturday. One of those freak storms the Atlantic likes to toss around: squalls of bitter rain, winds that pounce like a tiger. Ray is determined that the weather won’t ruin the glory of the occasion. He stands outside the hearse, immaculate in his tailcoat, overseeing the removal of the coffin, impervious to the water running down his dark skin. All six of us pallbearers hover with black umbrellas, trying to keep the rain off the casket.

  When the coffin is installed amongst banks of white roses at the front of the church, lid lifted, the mourners arrive through a scent of flowers powerful as bottles of smashed perfume. We stand quietly in our soaking clothes at the back, eyes lowered, waiting for the moment when we’ll spring into action and cart the coffin out to the hole already dug in the wet ground.

  I raise my chin a little, curious to spot the husband of Elizabeth Dunn. I’d imagined a prince – a big man with a head of fiery hair like a crown, someone imposing and full of authority – but the man I watch walking slowly down the aisle is slim, gentle-looking, with curling brown hair cut short. His round glasses are speckled with rain. He holds the hand of a small girl. She drags behind, stamping her feet, clutching a teddy to her chest. Throughout the service, I hear the wails of that child, rising to a peak during every eulogy. It gives me goose bumps over the ones I already have from the cold.

  *

  The lawn is slick with rain. We take it even slower than usual, the weight of the casket keeping us steady. Four men take over at the graveside, arranging the ropes that lower her into the shallow grave lined with fake grass.

  I step back, allowing the family to have the front-row spots. The child kicks her father’s shins. He leans down and gently holds her shoulders to try and stop her. She smacks her sodden teddy into his face, throws it against the coffin, dislodging a spray of roses. The other mourners frown and purse their lips. An elderly lady with a black veil jutting over her face tut-tuts. The father crouches down and tries to soothe his daughter, but she wriggles out of his grasp, yelling: ‘I want my Mummy!’

  Before I know it, I’m squatting down, looking into dark, angry eyes. ‘Hi,’ I say to the child. ‘What’s your name?’

  She stops screaming, her mouth freezing into a silent O. She stares at me, pressing against her father’s legs. Her bottom lip trembles.

  I take a deep breath. ‘See if you can guess my name,’ I say. ‘I’ll give you a clue if you like.’

  She frowns and wipes a plump hand across her snotty nose. I pull out the clean hanky that Ray always makes us carry in our top pockets and offer it. She doesn’t seem to understand what it’s for, dangles it unused from her closed fist. She puts her head on one side. ‘Are you Rumpelstiltskin?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rumpelstiltskin.’ She repeats the long word carefully, stumbling over the syllables, her face serious.

  ‘Um. No. I’m not. My name is an animal.’

  ‘Dog.’

  I smile. ‘No. But it’s an animal with a long tail and fur, and people keep them as pets.’

  ‘A rat.’

  This child says the weirdest things. ‘Okay. Another clue. I chase rats, and dogs chase me.’

  ‘Cat!’ she shouts.

  ‘Very clever.’ I wink. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we go play a game just over there? Give your daddy some peace and quiet. We won’t go out of his sight.’

  She retreats into silence, fixing me with a long, appraising stare under wet spiked eyelashes. Th
e kid could be a poker player. Time stretches, and I’m wondering if I’ve lost the match when she blinks and gives a solemn nod. I put out my hand. She takes it without hesitation.

  It’s stopped raining. We stand amongst the dripping gravestones. ‘What’s your name?’ I ask again.

  ‘Grace.’

  ‘That’s a pretty name. How old are you?’

  ‘Five and a half.’ She gets a length of pink wool from her pocket. It’s a tangled knot and she holds it towards me, and I understand that she wants me to unravel it. When I finish, she puts up her hands, stubby fingers splayed like starfish. ‘Can you play cat’s cradle?’ she asks.

  I am terrible at the game. I fumble between the strands of pink, plucking the wrong strings, dropping the ones I’m supposed to keep taut. But my clumsiness makes her laugh. ‘No, silly!’ she shouts. ‘Not like that.’

  ‘Hey,’ I say. ‘Did you hear about the actual cats who live inside the cradles?’

  She gives me a glance both suspicious and curious.

  I fumble around in my mind for words to weave a story. ‘Inside every woollen cradle is an invisible cat. Each one the same colour as the wool. And they long for you to see them, so every time you pull the strings, the cat dances up and down waving its paws like this …’ I make a paddling action. She laughs. ‘So, all these kitty-cats, Bob the blue one, Yasmin the yellow one … they’re waving like crazy. But there was this one particular cat … Pete. Guess what colour he was?’

  ‘Pete?’ She bites her lip, then yells, ‘Purple? Pink!’

  ‘Yup. Smart girl. Pete the pink cat.’ I glance towards the graveside, and see with relief that the crowd is dispersing. Grace’s father comes over and places a hand on his daughter’s dark, springy hair. ‘Thank you,’ he says in an English accent. ‘You’re the first person to gain her trust since …’ He pauses. ‘I even heard her laughing.’