Life Without Me

by Anna Legat

  He escorted Tony to the front door with an amiable hand on his back. An insincere, toothy smile cracked his face. They shook hands, though Tony didn’t respond to Ehler’s cheery ‘Take care, mate!’

  Tony was placated. Naturally, he wasn’t overly chummy when parting company with Ehler, but he had left without fuss. It appeared he felt reassured. I felt nauseous. Whether this tragic ending was by his design or somebody else’s, he came out of it a cheap traitor. His back was covered – that’s all that mattered to him. The fact that several lives were damaged in the process was neither here nor there. To Tony Sebastian it was merely collateral damage. My love-hate relationship with Tony had become one-sided: now I only hated him.

  My contempt for him was such that I could no longer see the physical beauty with which he had charmed me for years. That beauty had peeled off him like a snake’s skin. Beneath it, he was a flabby, ageing man with liver spots darkening on his hands and thinning hair. Dorian Gray.

  I don’t know why I followed him as he drove to his dingy basement club. I guess I wanted to feed my eyes on his ugliness; confirm my superiority.

  The club was open. It was one of those places that never closes – always keen to serve its patrons’ seediest needs. Sleepy jazzy music seeped from the walls, where invisible speakers were camouflaged under canvases brimming with erotica. Tony headed for the bar and ordered tonic water. He gestured to the barman to lean over the counter. The barman – about thirty, chubby, and clearly gay – smiled, flattered by Tony’s attention.

  ‘A boy, calls himself Etienne,’ Tony said into the barman’s keen ear, ‘I want to see him. Tell him I’ll make it worth his while. I’ll wait there,’ he pointed to a secluded table in a corner.

  ‘I haven’t seen Etienne in a while. Would anyone else do?’ The barman fluttered his eyelashes. ‘I’m off in half an hour …’

  ‘Etienne.’ Tony replied curtly and walked away.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ His feelings deeply wounded, the barman shrugged and slid into his pocket the fifty-pound note Tony had left on the counter for him.

  I was watching Tony concealed in the red shadows of the club, sipping tonic water, smoking a cigarette – a sad picture of a dirty old man, I thought. Somewhere deep, deep inside me, suppressed and unwanted, languished a great, choking sorrow for him. Was it because I loved him that I couldn’t condemn him, and couldn’t free myself from him? Whatever he did I was drawn to back him, desperate to understand him. Or was it because we had so much in common, Tony and I? I had just been lucky with my life having gone the way it had: smoothly and conventionally. But, had it been derailed at any point in time, would I have ended up just like him: hardened, unscrupulous, self-serving? Wasn’t I a survivor, a fighter who hadn’t always played it clean? Hadn’t it always been about winning for me, too? After all, I’d never denied it – I was an ungraceful loser.

  My self-analysis was interrupted by the arrival of none other than Paula. Surprisingly, no one but I was aware of her arrival, though it was quite a dramatic entrance even by Paula’s standards. But then she didn’t exactly enter the scene in person …

  She swooped on me like a big raven or rook, covered in blood. Her hair was dripping wet, clinging to her naked skeletal body. The blood was caked in her hair, smudged across her face like warpaint, and lazily coagulating on her fingertips.

  ‘Georgie!’ she demanded, her eyes rounded with disbelief, ‘you have to come! Please! You have to save me!’

  She dragged me to her flat and there she was – the physical she – peacefully dead in her bathtub. I couldn’t believe how she was still trying to steal my thunder! I was supposed to be dying, but hey, she had to beat me to it!

  The bathwater was still warm and still crackling with bubbles. Another realisation hit me: Paula had run a scented bubble bath for herself before she got in and cut her wrists! That’s what some would call dying with style! I had to give it to her – she was good!

  The water and even the bubbles were dyed red. Paula’s knees were propped up and her head rested comfortably, so only the amount of blood and the fact that she wasn’t breathing indicated the woman was dead. A razor had slipped out of her hand and was floating aimlessly in the bath alongside a sponge and a rubber duck with a stupid grin. The cuts on her wrists were deep, ploughed across old scars: old, unsuccessful attempts she had made on her life. Only this time no one had come to save her.

  ‘Georgie? Do something! Call someone!’ The ghost of my sister was pulling at my virtual sleeve. I was staring, rather speechless. She was panicking; running around me in circles like a crazed dog. ‘I left a message for Rob … He didn’t come! Get Rob! He’ll come, for you. It’s not too late!’

  She was dead. It was too late. Rob never read his text messages. He was technology averse. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that, but she had fucked it up – irreversibly. There was no getting out of this hole. I was staring at my sister’s slashed body. She had done it to herself.

  She could’ve had a life, a life as good as mine had been – simple, traditional – but somewhere something had gone wrong for her. Conversely, it occurred to me, I could’ve ended up like her: tragic and pathetic, but somewhere, somehow I had been spared. Pure chance. Life was pure chance in a silly old game of Russian roulette. If I had lived it merrily until the day I died from old age I would’ve never realised that. I would’ve thought I had earned my life, I had made it what it was through my own strength of character and good planning. I would’ve died a happy, supercilious twat. At least now I was dying with no illusions. Paula, on the other hand, still believed in Santa Claus and still hoped for a miracle which would present her with yet another chance.

  ‘Georgie,’ she was prodding me, her agitation reaching new heights, ‘I didn’t mean to do that!’ She pointed to her earthly remains in the bath. ‘You know it! You must help me. You’re my big sister, for God’s sake! Do something! I don’t want to die!’

  ‘But you are dead,’ I finally said out loud what I had been thinking quietly all along.

  ‘But …’ She paused and gaped at the carnage. I think she was beginning to realise there was no arguing with simple facts. ‘But look at this mess! It’s awful!’ At last she mustered an ounce of self-criticism.

  ‘Let’s face it: you’ve never been particularly tidy. Who said your death – if self-inflicted – would be any tidier than your life.’

  ‘You’re such a bitch!’ she hissed.

  I was used to invectives from Paula. Since we were little girls, Paula would blame me for all her misfortunes and evil deeds. Like that Nativity in which she’d been cast as a donkey. She convinced the world it was my fault because I had been given the part of a camel.

  ‘If Georgia wasn’t a stupid camel, I could be Mary, but no, she has to be a camel, and we’re sisters! How can a sister of a camel be Mary? It’s her fault I’m a donkey!’ There was some logic to it, everyone had to admit. She cried and cried. Mother and Dad clucked sympathetically. I felt like such a shit sister. I wasn’t worthy to be a speck of dust on her sandals, never mind a bloody camel! The whole household was in mourning.

  But that was in the past. Now, it was different. We were both dead, kind of, and by all accounts should be in mourning, but I couldn’t be arsed. I shrugged off Paula’s criticism with indifference. I didn’t even care to ask her why she did it. She had been heading towards this spectacular conclusion all her life. It was inevitable.

  I saw little point in hanging about in Paula’s flat. I found the mess difficult to handle. Something drew me back to Tony. Perhaps I wanted to witness his final humiliation: the boy turning him down, his ego beaten like a dog. Or perhaps, again, I had this irresistible compulsion to be near him. Fatal attraction at its most pathetic! I was torn between despising and worshipping him, and I couldn’t tell which way the winds were blowing in my poor head. Be that as it may, I went back to the club.

  Paula tagged along. She didn’t want to stay alone in her flat. She had always bee
n a bit of a drag, and that was another thing I’d been quite used to since we were young. Sooner or later I would have to make some decisions: either stay up here in this never-world with my little sister tagging behind me into eternity, or go back to life, disguised as a vegetable. Neither option was too appealing. I pushed decision time out of my mind.

  ‘Are you in love with him?’ Paula asked me as soon as we got back to the club and found Tony stooped over his second tonic water, alone and waiting for the boy. To my surprise, his loneliness gave me little satisfaction. I suppose pity could be more gratifying than revenge, and pity is what I felt when I looked at him.

  ‘No! Of course, not. What gave you that idea?’ I glared at her, unnerved by her presence and by her bloody unwelcome insightfulness.

  ‘It wasn’t long ago when you and he were lovers. I know – he told me.’

  ‘I know you know. I know you told Rob. I know what you were trying to achieve. So, was it worth it?’

  We looked at each other. I felt no resentment towards her. In a way I was grateful for what she did. I had discovered things about Rob that would help me let him go – if I had to. I’d found out he could, after all, live without me. Thanks to Paula. Perhaps her telling Rob about my affair was like my own belated confession to him. Perhaps his seeking solace in Olivia was the absolution he had given me. We were quits.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Paula said. It wasn’t an act. She genuinely regretted it. She was genuinely seeking absolution for her sins. Probably she was scoring her first brownie points with St Peter. How would that interview at Heaven’s Door go?

  Paula (insistently): Peter, darling, please let me in!

  St Peter: You are a sinner, my child. A camel will sooner pass through the eye of a needle than you through this heavenly checkpoint.

  Paula (tearfully): But haven’t I atoned for my sins? I said sorry to that ugly old sister of mine even though she was the one who had committed adultery and – let’s face it – fornicated like a mad rabbit behind her husband’s back!

  St Peter (sternly): You’re doing it again! You’re blaming your sister. You have to mean it. Say it like you mean it, for God’s sake!

  Paula (genuinely): I’m sorry. I truly am.

  ‘Don’t worry. What’s done is done,’ I conceded defeat. In all honesty, I just wanted her out of my hair. I wondered if she had anywhere else to go: places to visit, people to haunt …

  It appeared I was the only item on her agenda. She was on a mission to cleanse her soul and achieve redemption. She could not leave things unsaid. I was in for a long and torturous confession. She said, ‘I was jealous. I wanted your life to myself. I thought it wasn’t fair: you had it all, I had nothing.’

  ‘You had an amazing career! Theatre, acting …’

  ‘I was an understudy. In theatre and in life. You were the star. Still are. I envy you. I’ve always envied you. Even now.’

  ‘Look at me, Paula! What’s there to envy?’

  She shrugged, unconvinced.

  ‘All good things come to an end,’ I commented philosophically, trying – in vain – to make her feel better. ‘Look at me now – practically a vegetable!’

  ‘A stubborn bloody turnip!’ she chuckled.

  ‘I think more of an aubergine,’ I protested.

  ‘Nope – a turnip! You’ve always been a turnip – the well-rooted, stubborn sort. I’ve no idea how you managed to get those men to love you, to so bloody love you.’

  ‘What men?’

  ‘Dad, for one –’ Her crestfallen face looked endearing. I couldn’t help but fall for it.

  ‘You were the daddy’s girl! He adored you!’

  ‘Wrong!’ She stomped her foot, like she used to when things didn’t go her way. ‘He merely looked after me, tried to keep me out of harm’s way. But he adored you. He admired you, God knows for what … You mattered, only you. He didn’t mind that much when I told him I was leaving. I was hoping he’d want to stop me, beg me to stay … I really needed him to say it: “ Stay, Paula, don’t go” … That’s all he had to do. He would’ve done it for you. He would’ve begged you … But to me he said, “It’s your life, Paula. You wouldn’t want me to tell you how to live it.” I think he was relieved I was out of his hair.’

  ‘You told him you were leaving?’

  ‘I did. I told him and no one else. It was my call for help. But he didn’t stop me. If he’d tried, things would’ve been … well, different, I suppose. I would’ve stayed; I would’ve married Rob. I knew him before you butted in –’ Paula’s accusatory glare went well with her running mascara and swollen eyelids. She was like an endangered species facing the final solution – a panda with a gun barrel stuck in its chest, looking the assassin in the eye.

  ‘I had no idea you and Rob knew each other –’

  ‘It’s a small world.’ The panda produced a resigned smile. Something dreamy and fuzzy spilled over her face. She couldn’t help herself telling me every small detail – drill it into me. If it made her feel better, I was happy to take it in. ‘It was a New Year’s Eve street party, my first year in London. I clapped my eyes on Rob in Trafalgar Square. Masses of people, but he stood head and shoulders above the rest –’

  ‘He’s always been rather tall.’ I don’t know why I tried to sabotage her fairy tale. I guess I had every right to be slightly bitter. She gave me a supercilious glance and went on regardless.

  ‘Everyone was drunk. Everyone was at it. Lights. Fireworks. He came from nowhere, a bit like Batman coming out of thick fog. Stood next to me. We danced. Well, we sort of danced – next to each other, you know, as if we weren’t together but we only had eyes for each other. I said something. He said something. And I knew – he was my Mr Right.’

  It all sounded very familiar. I was experiencing a strange sense of déjà vu. I was beginning to think my first encounter with Rob was a mere sequel to him and Paula, but I quickly convinced myself that it was theirs that amounted to nothing but a rehearsal.

  Paula continued along the familiar path of a dark alleyway they had found in the backstreets of London where she mounted an empty beer crate –

  ‘An empty beer crate so that I was high enough for him to enter me smoothly like a knife into butter,’ I finished the sentence for her and she gaped at me, baffled.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘He did the same with me. Good old Rob,’ I shrugged. ‘He likes his routines.’

  ‘It wasn’t a routine!’ Paula was typically quick to contradict me. ‘It was spontaneous! It was real between us!’

  ‘It always is the first time round,’ I agreed. Who would have thought Rob had once been such a seasoned virginity snatcher? I should’ve guessed. Olivia was the living proof – she was bound to still be an unopened can, if slightly beyond the expiry date. Strangely, none of it seemed to matter to me any more. I was more concerned for Paula and her lofty delusions. I said, ‘If I’d known you and … him. I wouldn’t have dreamt of going between the two of you!’

  Of course, I knew I would have. Rob had always been mine, but now, from the perspective of time, there was little purpose in making that point. I couldn’t imagine my life without Rob and, conversely, I couldn’t imagine Rob’s life with Paula. It would’ve been a rollercoaster of emotional blackmail and a diet of seaweed and laxatives. I saved him but this point was rather academic at this stage of our earthly disintegration.

  I promptly offered Paula my unequivocal apology. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Paula shook in frustration. ‘Don’t be daft! Stop apologising! You’ve always been so bloody stupid! Of course, Rob wouldn’t have married me anyway. Our one-night stand didn’t mean anything to him. Do you really think I have any doubts? If I had any, he had dispelled them on your wedding day.’

  ‘Is that right? Is that what happened?’ I was intrigued. ‘I didn’t know what to make of you two flirting –’

  ‘Us two? I was flirting, he was avoiding me! He was so infuriatingly polite I almost puked! I gave him a choice. I op
ened my heart to him –’ Your legs, more likely, I quipped inwardly, remembering her short red dress, ‘– but he said no. Plain and simple no. With the utmost courtesy, of course. He didn’t want to upset me, but he loved you, you cow! I was nobody to him – well, just the bride’s little sister. He’d love me like his own fucking sister. I was livid. Threw my Zippo at him.’

  ‘Where was that?’ At last, I was beginning to piece it all together.

  ‘What does it matter – where? In the toilet, if you must know.’

  ‘Men’s toilet?’

  ‘What if it was!’

  ‘I saw you leaving the men’s toilet. I thought you’d been getting off with someone. Such a romantic set-up …’ My voice was teetering on the verge of breaking into a hearty chuckle.

  ‘No, I was being rebuked by your groom. No pun intended, but he was on a high horse of marital fidelity, the fool! I threw my lighter at him. The mirror cracked. He picked up the lighter, handed it to me. His zip was still undone – I had caught him between the urinal and the washbasin in the loo, you see. I told him to stick it up his own arse. So there, so that you bloody well know: he loved you then and he still loves you now, the same way, and I don’t think that will ever change.’

  I could tell her about Olivia, but I didn’t. Instead, I said: ‘So what am I really: a turnip or a cow?’

  ‘Both!’ she blurted. Logic wasn’t always her strongest quality, which was fortunate. I could go on humouring her. It was the least I could do for her – the woman had just killed herself! She needed some light relief.

  She sat next to Tony, cocked her head, stretched her long, scrawny neck, and peered into his eyes. ‘What really got me was Tony,’ she told me after a moment of watchful and serene adoration.

  ‘Tony?’

  ‘I could accept Rob. You and Rob – you’re married for better or for worse, worse mainly, but married you are and I had to live with it. But when Tony told me about you and him … that was the cherry on top.’ She gave him a disdainful kiss. Oddly, he felt something, for he rubbed his left cheek as if he’d suffered a muscle spasm. Paula abandoned his side and glided towards me. I was still unnerved by her nakedness. Was she going to spend all eternity looking like that? It wasn’t a savoury prospect. I could only hope that true to her nature, sooner or later, she would leave me behind and run away with some handsome bisexual angel. Meantime, she breathed into my ear, ‘Tony was my idol. He was calm. Superior. He could deal with emotions. He was above all that daily pap of sentimentality. I worshipped him. And then he tells me about you. He drivels like a toothless dog … You know what I thought? I thought: Shit! The cow steals all my men! First Dad, then Rob. Now Tony.’