by Clare Empson
Jake whirls around, pint sloshing over his hand, laughing as he pulls me into his arms. He kisses me on the mouth, briefly, though just the lightest touch of his lips is a pathway of electrons leading straight to my groin.
‘Come and meet the boys,’ he says, introducing us to Eddie first, a James Taylor lookalike with the same strong brows and dark, shoulder-length hair; then Tom, the drummer, who jumps up and shakes both our hands.
‘Jake’s been telling us all about you. A pair of geniuses according to him.’
‘He’s exaggerating. Wildly.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Rick says.
Jake has swooped upon a table littered with empty fag packets and scrunched-up bags of crisps, which he sweeps to one side. Tom brings over a tray of drinks, including a couple of pints for me and Rick. Jake, I notice, has switched to whisky, which he drinks neat without ice.
He says, ‘As you know, Alice is going to be working on our artwork for the album cover. We should probably tell her a bit about the record.’
‘It’s a rock album,’ Eddie says. ‘But with more ballads than the last one. So we need the artwork to reflect that.’
‘And the love songs are sorrowful and melancholic,’ Tom says. ‘That’s the mood we want to convey.’
‘Can we see the drawing you did the other day? The expression on that guy’s face is exactly what we’re talking about. She’s unfazed by nudity, by the way. We could all take our kit off and Alice would be there with her pencil measuring the distance between our eyes.’
Everyone laughs, including me, I feel myself beginning to relax. I’m not at all self-conscious flipping the pages of my sketchbook, until we come to the latest drawing of Josef.
‘Wow, he’s beautiful,’ Tom says, and there’s a wistfulness in his voice. ‘What a face.’
‘Jake is right. This is incredible work,’ Eddie says, and his approval, coming after a coolness I do not understand, gives me a little rush of satisfaction.
‘Are you sure you want a charcoal sketch? You don’t want to try oils?’
‘Definitely black and white and sort of sketchy,’ Jake says. ‘I liked your idea of us posing as if we were the life models.’
‘We could try out very classical poses so you look like statues but you’re on a stage and you have your instruments around you. Almost as if you’ve been turned to stone.’
‘See? I told you she was good. Robin is going to love this artwork.’
‘Who’s Robin? Your manager?’ Rick asks.
‘He’s an art dealer, kind of our patron really. He spends a lot of time with musicians and actors and writers. He has a whole scene going on.’
‘Please don’t tell me you’re talking about Robin Armstrong?’
‘Yeah, that’s him. He likes to support new talent. He did a lot for the Stones at the beginning.’
Rick clutches a hand to his chest, miming cardiac arrest.
‘The man is a god. And here you are just casually dropping his name into the conversation.’
Jake says, ‘You can meet him if you want. We’ll introduce you.’
And I know Rick feels exactly as I do, that this chance meeting with Jacob Earl, lead singer of Disciples, is causing ripples and repercussions in our lives, his and mine, that seem miraculous.
I marvel at Jake’s confidence when he kiboshes a suggestion for the five of us to go out for a curry.
‘Alice and I might make other plans,’ he says, standing up from the table and holding out a hand to me. And though Rick whistles and Eddie rolls his eyes and Tom laughs, no one seems to care.
The moment the door to his flat closes behind us, things turn frantic. Grabbing each other, kissing, wrenching off clothes. I am torn between the urgent desire to feel Jake on top of me, our skin melding together, his ribs pressing painfully into mine, and wanting to slow down, like he did, wanting to make him wait. He puts his arms around my waist as if to carry me to bed, and I say, ‘Hold on, not yet.’ I begin to kiss a pathway down his chest and hear his sharp intake of breath as I fall to my knees and move closer and closer to his groin.
And so it will be a game of control between us, I realise, as I reach his erection, harder and fuller than I could ever have imagined, and take him tentatively in my mouth.
Jake says, ‘Oh God,’ and the tortured tone of his voice is a shot of aphrodisiac. After a few seconds I return to the slow exploration of his body, first my lips, then my tongue, and this time he gives a long, low moan and grips hold of my head with his hands, his fingers laced into my hair.
‘Fucking hell, Alice,’ is what he says.
Afterwards, we lie on his sofa, wrapped up together, the room lit only by the lamps outside. Soho is in full night-time swing, the rattle of cabs in the street below, the drunken laughter of strangers.
Inside, though, we are silent, as if it is impossible to put into words what is happening between us.
Jake smoothes his palm along the side of my body, rhythmically, as if he’s stroking a cat. It feels comforting to be touched like this, it stirs something inside me, something that goes way back.
‘I like the way you touch me,’ I tell him, and he smiles.
‘Same.’
I reach for his hand, holding it in my own, rubbing circles in his palm with my thumb. Instinctively, I press my thumb up and down, right in the centre.
‘That feels good. Reflexology?’
‘I don’t even know what that is.’
I carry on with my thumb-pressing, working my way slowly up to the base of his hand and then his wrist. My thumb hits a thick ridge of scar tissue, confusing at first. I stop pressing and start stroking, learning its shape. Jake just watches me.
‘What’s this?’
He takes his other hand from where it rests on my thigh and brings both wrists together.
‘Two of them, actually. A matching pair. Stupid mistake when I was sixteen.’
I’m so shocked I can’t find any words. Instead, I kiss each of his wrists in turn.
‘But why?’ I say finally, and Jake shrugs.
‘I think the correct term is a cry for help.’
‘I hate that you were once so sad,’ I say, and my throat feels tight with unshed tears.
‘Seems to me you didn’t like childhood much either. Lots of people don’t. It really doesn’t matter.’
He moves even closer so that he can kiss me, eyes first, nose, then mouth.
‘Don’t look like that, Alice. The past is over. You and me, here, in the now. That’s all there is.’
Now
Luke
Reunions between adopted children and their natural parents can feel deceptively celebratory at first. There’s relief on both sides, a passionate desire for it to work. But fast-tracking these fragile new bonds can end in disaster if both parties are not careful.
Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Trauma by Joel Harris
I’m always in charge of the food when people come over, and today I’ve decided to keep it simple. It would be foolish to try and compete with Rick’s cooking, so I’ve made a casserole instead. Shin of beef from Moen’s, the butcher, simmered for three hours in a lethal combination of sherry and red wine, fresh thyme to lift it into something sublime. I’ll serve it with mashed potatoes, the cardiac variety, whipped with butter and cream until they are as soft and melting as a mousse. We have beautiful cheeses and plenty of red wine – a classic Chianti I’ve fallen in love with; the table is laid with our favourite plates, flowers and six bright orange candles that Hannah picked up in the Design Museum. It’s beginning to feel like a party.
‘This is exactly the celebration we should be having,’ Hannah says, because she can always read my mind. ‘Having Ben and Elizabeth here makes it special. We are introducing your best friends to your parents.’
There is nothing to do but laugh at the a
bsurdity of this statement, and for a moment hilarity overtakes us.
‘Christ,’ I say, remembering seconds before they turn to mush, ‘I need to turn the potatoes off.’
Alice arrives first. The moment she sees Samuel, she swoops him up from his little rug, lifts his T-shirt and blows raspberries against his stomach. We do this too, but Samuel always laughs hardest with Alice. And it’s an addictive sound, these deep-bellied chuckles of his. Even when she has stopped, he sits on her lap, smiling at her, waiting patiently for the next trick, and she obliges, playing peekaboo behind the flat of her hand.
Today she has brought a toy with her, an octopus with different sounds hidden within each of his legs – a bell, a rattle, the crunch of crackly paper. It’s a slightly ugly thing, this octopus, bright blue with black and white stripes and sinister eyes, but Samuel loves it. He grips one of the legs in his small fist and doesn’t let go.
Rick arrives in a cab twenty minutes later. He hands over a bottle of champagne and says, ‘I was going to drive, but I changed my mind at the last minute in case we want to get pissed.’
‘Rude not to when we have all this,’ I say, gesturing to six bottles of Chianti lined up on the worktop.
Alice says, ‘Oh Rick, look, Chianti Classico. The labels are still the same.’
‘We used to drink this in Italy,’ Rick says. ‘Alice was there for a whole summer and I went out to visit. A long time ago now.’
I catch something here, an edge of melancholia between the two of them. But there is no time to examine it, because Ben and Elizabeth arrive, the way they always do, in a maelstrom of noise and excitement. Ben is dressed in his yellow and black Rupert the Bear suit, bought in a charity shop ten years ago and worn relentlessly ever since, Elizabeth is holding an enormous bouquet of flowers and a chocolate cake she made herself.
Ben and Rick begin talking instantly, and while I race around the room filling wine glasses and checking the casserole and mashing the potatoes, I try to listen in.
Rick says, ‘I checked out your website this morning. I really like what you’re doing. Are you with a gallery?’
I’m quietly proud when Ben tells him that he has already had two solo shows in London and one in New York.
‘Sit down anywhere,’ I say, carrying the casserole over to the table, and it turns out that Ben and Rick are opposite each other at one end while Alice, Hannah and Elizabeth sit at the other. I perch in the middle, perfectly poised for both conversations.
The casserole and the wine are good and the noise level ramps up the way it does when your oldest friends come around. Already there’s a strange familiarity about Rick and Alice, almost as if we have known them for years.
And Hannah clearly feels the same, for I overhear her saying to Alice, ‘Funny how quickly you’ve fitted into our family. Like we’ve known you for ever.’
A confusing stab of anguish at this, my girlfriend’s faint disloyalty to my adoptive mother. Hannah and her family, wild, Cornish free spirits that they are, have tried and failed to connect with Christina.
When Hannah first got pregnant and we decided to keep the baby, they invited my mother and me to Cornwall. I’d been there once before, a golden weekend where I learned to surf and Hannah’s mother, Maggie, took us on a walk over the cliffs and taught me the names of the wild flowers that grew there. We’d built a fire on the beach and drunk hot cider from a flask, and when the tide came in, Peter, her father, took us cave-wading, a dangerous torchlit pursuit that left us up to our necks in freezing water. On the train journey back to London I felt strangely bereft, pining for a county and a family never known before.
When my mother came to stay, she drove the eight hours from Yorkshire and arrived in her navy-blue Golf with her Jack Russell on the passenger seat beside her. Seeing my mother arriving or leaving anywhere solo swamps me in sadness, I can’t help it. And as she entered Hannah’s brilliantly ramshackle house, stepping over surfboards and wetsuits slung down in the hallway, the family’s effervescence seemed to leak away. They’d been waiting with a home-made carrot cake and the teapot on standby, excited about the impending meeting, the projection of our shared future, the conversations we would have about the baby. But, instead, my mother’s formality (a mask for shyness, I’ve always thought) set them all on edge and suddenly no one was acting like themselves. Peter, one of the best conversationalists I know, seemed capable only of asking about the journey; Maggie, too, tested out topics – gardening, Tony Blair, the failing NHS – and dropped them one by one, until we were left with virtual silence. I was completely torn. Wanting so much to belong to this family but feeling physically divided, as if by an estuary: me and my mother on one side, the pink-skinned, curly-haired Robinsons on the other. I don’t want to be on my mother’s island, but I don’t want to leave her there either. Complicated being me.
Throughout this lunch, which becomes louder and more amusing with each new bottle of wine, I am happy to sit back and listen. I want to absorb the sensation of my old-new parents conversing with my best friend. Rick and Ben are talking about portraiture and what it is that makes a painting endure.
Rick says, ‘I always think good art reveals itself slowly over time. That’s what collectors want. They want a work that shows you a little bit more of the process each time you look at it. For every hour of making, I try to spend another one looking. The critical thing is what you observe when you go back to your work.’
Hannah says, ‘Rick, this is exactly why you should give interviews sometimes. People love to hear about the process.’
‘I hate the press. I have no need of them, my work sells. Why should I tell people about my private life?’
‘Because you are public property in a way. People are fascinated with you, your art, your influences and inspirations. Isn’t it a bit hard-hearted not to share those details?’
‘I do share them. There’s always a press release that goes out with each show.’
‘Oh come on. Richard Fields, the persona behind the portraits. No one knows that. There’s virtually nothing true or honest written about you; it’s all conjecture.’
Alice says, ‘Maybe Hannah could interview you? You could trust her not to write something you didn’t like.’
‘Oh Rick, would you? I’ve so wanted to ask you but haven’t quite dared. I’d give you full copy approval. And anything else you wanted.’
Hannah’s lovely face is aglow with possibility; how could he resist? We are all watching Rick as he considers it, his reluctance is clear. Finally he smiles.
‘Hannah, of course. For you I’ll make an exception. It might even be fun. When would you like to do it?’
‘I’m back at work in two weeks and it would be amazing to have something lined up. My editor won’t believe it.’
‘Have you found an au pair yet?’ Elizabeth asks.
‘Not one we like and can afford. I’m getting panicky about it. Although Luke’s mother,’ Hannah stumbles infinitesimally on the word but carries on, ‘will step in if we’re stuck.’
Samuel is sitting on Alice’s lap, one hand clasped around her long jet necklace, his head nestled against her chest. I am sure we are all thinking the same thing, but it’s Elizabeth who hints at it.
‘Look how comfortable he is with you, Alice. Shame you can’t look after him.’
There’s a flash of intensity around the table; Hannah and I are unable to look at each other.
But Alice says, ‘Oh my goodness, wouldn’t that be great? He’s such a gorgeous baby. I wonder if there’s a way to make it work.’
Hannah says, ‘Could you, Alice? Even in the short term? I’d feel so happy leaving him with you.’
‘I’d love to help.’
‘We’d pay you, of course.’
‘What about your work, Alice?’ Rick says.
‘Huh. Painting pooches for rich old ladies? I can do it in my sleep. Yo
u know I can.’
‘I’m not sure it’s such a great idea. You did say you wanted to take things slowly.’
Elizabeth says, ‘But isn’t there something so lovely about the idea of Alice looking after her son’s son. Sort of full circle.’
A silence falls on the table again. Alice presses her lips against Samuel’s scalp, lightly, once.
‘It must have been so hard on you having to give Luke up,’ Elizabeth says, and I glance at Alice quickly. I recognise the fight for composure. It’s a battle I’m going through myself.
‘You have no idea.’
The pain in her face is almost shocking to see. I love Elizabeth, but for someone with a career dependent on her people skills, she can be immensely tactless.
Alice has made a hammock of her arms; Samuel is lying across them, feet and head balanced on her elbows. When she strokes his cheek, he smiles at her, full beam, irresistible.
‘It’s tempting, little bird, isn’t it?’ she says, and Hannah leaps up from the table.
‘Luke, wouldn’t that be the perfect solution? Let’s have tea and some of Elizabeth’s delicious cake,’ she says, just stopping herself, it seems to me, from adding ‘to celebrate’.
Then
Alice
Jake is cooking for Tom, Eddie, Rick and me, and he has thrown himself into it with his usual vigour and intensity. Not for him the standard student fare of spaghetti Bolognese or macaroni cheese. We are having bouillabaisse, made from fish bought at Billingsgate Market this morning (he left the flat at six to get there before it closed), and tomatoes cooked in his oven for hours until they collapsed into a sweet, garlicky mess.
He has made a rouille to go with it, and a green salad dressed with olive oil bought from the chemist, with day-old panini donated by Luigi, grilled and rubbed with cut cloves of garlic.
‘Where did you learn to cook like this?’ I ask him as I lay the table with additional knives and forks bought hastily from a junk shop near college.