by Isla Dewar
Anna said, ‘Enough. We’re going back. No more short cuts.’
‘I suppose you’re too old for them.’ Marlon’s voice drifted over the hedge.
‘Yes. I’m old. I no longer crawl under hedges.’
‘I’m not old, though.’
‘You’re new. I’ve noticed. And as you’re new, you can come back through that hedge and we’ll go home the normal way.’
‘Don’t want to.’
‘Fine,’ said Anna. ‘I’m going back. And when I’m home I’m having a mug of hot chocolate and toast. A new person who uses a short cut gets water.’
She started to walk back to Richard’s yard and heard Marlon come after her. She’d heard about bribery. Friends who were parents had told her they’d vowed not to use it but had in the end done so. It hadn’t taken her long to succumb. An hour? Maybe two, she thought. I have failed at being a babysitter light.
She could hear Marlon trudging behind her. He was panting. She admired that he could sound so resentful while breathing heavily. They renegotiated the wall, stamped through the weeds and squeezed back into the yard. Richard nodded as they walked past him.
‘Wondered if you’d be coming back. It’s a bit of a jungle going that way.’
Anna jerked her head at Marlon. ‘He said it was a short cut.’
Marlon said, ‘She’s too old for short cuts.’
Richard nodded. ‘Happens.’
Marlon looked up at Anna. ‘How long have you been old?’
All my life, she thought. But she told him a fortnight.
‘What were you before that?’
‘Long before I was old I was young. Then I was getting older. This lasted quite a while, years and years. Then I was simply getting old. Now I am old. Those are the phases.’
Richard agreed. Anna moved away. ‘Time to go home.’
After they reached the street, Marlon asked, ‘So did you used to be a hippie when you were getting older?’
‘No. I was a bit of a hippie when I was young. Though not as young as you. Older than that.’
‘Did you smoke dope and sing songs about love and peace? I’ve seen it in films. Shaggy people with a lot of hair.’
‘Not really,’ she lied.
They walked in silence, Marlon looking at his feet and contemplating, Anna thought, his untied shoelace.
She drifted back to her hippie days. They hadn’t lasted long. But they’d been happy, or happyish. When it came along, she preferred the rawness of punk. George had been a better, more committed hippie than she’d been. In fact, George had done a lot more in her life than she had. George should have been a poet. George lived. Anna had spent her life trying to write meaningful things about being alive.
She’d only smoked dope once. The memory still made her wince. It hadn’t been her finest hour. It had been at a student dinner party in a grubby flat somewhere off the High Street. Her Afghan coat had been slung flamboyantly over a dull maroon sofa. She sighed. God, she’d loved that coat. She wondered what happened to it. She had no recollection of throwing it out. But she didn’t have it now. It was gone. Gone like her golden hippie days.
She stamped along, hitting the pavement with her stick and sighing loudly. Marlon gave her a quizzical glance but said nothing.
There had been a lot of dope at that party. She remembered sitting at a table that was cluttered with bottles of wine, candles, plates of salad and ham and a large bowl of peas. Apart from an Aubrey Beardsley print on the wall, the bowl had been the most beautiful thing in the room. It was cream with a dusty blue pattern and a couple of very dark red flowers either side. The joint had been handed to her. She was a novice and not sure what to do, but owning up to that was not on. She was in the company of wild and free flower children; she wanted to be one of the gang. She inhaled deeply. Inhaled again and passed the joint along. She wasn’t bogarting it. Conversation flowed. Vietnam. Nixon. Bob Dylan. Life. Easy Rider. Everything was discussed. She ate a slice of tomato. The joint came her way once more. She inhaled very deeply. Twice. Handed it over and noticed the peas. They were green. Not just any green, but a shimmering deep green. The green of the universe – the most wonderful, meaningful colour in the world. She had to tell everybody.
‘How green are my peas,’ she said.
The conversation stopped. Everyone looked at her.
‘That green,’ she pointed at the peas, ‘is the colour of life. It is exquisite. It is everything. It is the green of the universe. We must believe it. We must try to be it. If we do, there will be no more wars.’
Walking home now, nearly there. She groaned. She’d never touched anything other than wine since then. If her fellow diners had been hostile, that might have been all right. But they’d smiled quietly, patronisingly. They’d known a novice hippie when they met one.
Marlon and Anna reached her building and climbed the stairs to her flat. Inside Marlon slid his school bag to the floor and looked round.
‘You’ve got a lot of books. Have you read them all?’
‘Most of them. Some are for dipping into.’
He went into the living room and surveyed the pictures on the walls, the odds and ends on shelves – a green wine flask, an ancient typewriter, a phrenology head, a ceramic hen and more. ‘You’ve got a lot of stuff and hardly any television.’
‘I don’t watch much. The news.’ She also followed several soaps but rarely admitted to it. ‘Shall we have hot chocolate and toast?’
‘Yeah.’
He followed her into the kitchen, still gazing round as he went. ‘I like big TVs. Yours is small. Do you get Netflix?’
‘No.’
She put a pan of milk on the cooker. Spooned chocolate into mugs. This child thing wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d imagined. Jigsaws and books weren’t going to do. ‘What’s your favourite thing?’ she asked.
‘Hot chocolate. Puppies. Cartoons. Drums. I’d like to play the drums.’
Tricky, she thought. I’m out of my depth with the boy. She was about to ask if he had any friends and decided not to. Of course he didn’t have friends. He’d come out of school alone. He wished nobody goodbye. Didn’t even look at his fellow pupils. A friendless skinny boy who liked puppies and wanted to play the drums. Her heart went out to him.
9
Not a Crush – An Awakening
‘He made me doubt everything about myself,’ said Anna.
‘Children do that,’ George told her.
‘He said I had more stuff than television. He looked round at the books and I saw that he didn’t understand why I had them. I realised I was a hermit who lived through reading. I absorbed other people’s feelings and thoughts instead of giving out my own. I thought I appeared to others as fierce and unapproachable.’
‘You don’t.’
‘I charge along the street, hair flying. Old coat buffeting out, glaring at people.’
George laughed. ‘A child looks round your living room, gives a juvenile opinion of what he sees and you beat yourself up.’
‘Yes, that’s about it.’
‘What did you say to him?’
‘Not a lot. I made him hot chocolate and toast. Then his mother came to pick him up. I was left to consider my life so far. I can’t help thinking that there are people with real jobs – policemen, brain surgeons, bus drivers for example. And there’s me, a poet and an editor of a poetry magazine. I feel I could have done more. I could have had a proper responsible job.’
They were on a bench in Princes Street Gardens eating tomato sandwiches. It was something George always enjoyed. From not far away came the sounds of the city – traffic and voices and passing music pouring out of open car windows – but here it was calm, the air was fresh and the food basic. Basil or provolone cheese never occurred to Anna. She served buttered bread and sliced tomatoes. It worked. ‘You wouldn’t have made a brain surgeon and the police wouldn’t have had you.’
‘They might.’
‘You’re small. You never have stuck
to wearing a uniform. You failed your driving test four times. You could never have watched and waited for a crook to come along. You’d have brought a book to a stake-out. And you are squeamish. If you’d had to attend a car crash, you’d have thrown up.’
‘Okay. I’ll give you all that. I’ve been doing this new job for a week and it’s opened my eyes to the world. I let it in when I should have stayed in my comfort zone, playing Mozart and Joni Mitchell and reading. But I didn’t and now I’m filled with doubt.’
‘A child has done this to you?’
‘No. A man.’
George nodded. ‘Ah. The truth. A man.’
‘I seem to be smitten,’ Anna said. She told George about Richard. ‘He isn’t good looking. In fact, he’s a bit ugly. But attractively so. He has a used face. I can see sorrow there, and intelligence, a bit of cruelty perhaps and tenderness. It is a face you want to stare at, only it would be rude.’
‘And this is just his face. What about the rest of him?’
‘Well, obviously his face is all I’ve seen. Except his hands. Good hands, big strong hands.’ She told George about Richard’s yard and the spice rack he was helping Marlon to make. She didn’t mention the short-cut fiasco. There were some absurd doings you kept from your friends. ‘I sit on an old car seat by a woodburning stove while the two work. I listen to them chat.’
‘They don’t talk to you, then?’
‘I get some gentle mockery, mostly about being a poet. I don’t think Richard sees them as being normal.’
‘Perhaps he thinks you are an intellectual. They can be frightening.’
‘Please don’t tell me that. I want him to like me.’
‘You are smitten.’
‘I think I’m in love. This is new to me. I can’t remember it happening. Is this what love is like? It comes to you uninvited. It grows within. It’s like a disease spreading through you. You don’t know how it got there or why. You don’t know what to do about it. It makes you want to cry.’ She looked suddenly hopeless. ‘I am so happy to be miserable.’
George patted her arm. ‘Maybe it’s just a crush.’
‘I’ve never had a crush before. Well, Lord Byron. But even I could see it wouldn’t lead to anything. Not with him being dead.’
George stood up, dusted stray crumbs from her jumper. ‘Let’s get a cup of coffee. I would suggest alcohol but I’m driving. I had the most awful crush on Steven Parkin when we were at school. I went red if he came near me. I hugged my pillow in bed at night, dreaming it was him.’
Anna started tidying their picnic debris, shoving sandwich wrapping into her bag. ‘I never knew. You and Steven Parkin.’
‘No, just me. Steven Parkin liked older women. He was fourteen and lusted after Sheila Brown, who was sixteen. I hadn’t a chance. But it was a trying time for me. In fact, I’d rather have had measles. God, I was in love.’
They made their way up to Princes Street and Starbucks.
‘What do you imagine when you think of this man?’ asked George.
‘I think of us sitting on the sofa of an evening. Having a meal together, a bottle of wine and pasta perhaps. Chatting. Browsing a bookshop.’
‘Not sex, then? Not his breath on your neck or his hands in your hair, his lips seeking yours?’
‘No. I find that embarrassing with someone I’ve hardly spoken to. Not that I mind sex. I’ve had plenty of it in my day. Remember, I’m the woman who posed nude on the steps of the National Gallery.’
‘Ah yes. I’d forgotten about that. Never saw the photos.’
‘No. It was early March, three o’clock in the morning. We were hoping nobody would be about. And it was quite quiet. But chilly, very chilly. I stood with my arms spread, trying to look liberated and gloriously happy. Then some passing motorist called the police and they came and the photographer and his assistant ran away. I couldn’t so much, on account of being naked.’
‘The police caught you?’
‘Yes, and they took me home to my parents. They weren’t well pleased. Not with me being naked. And I’d left my clothes in a heap at the bottom of the steps. It wasn’t a good time for me.’
‘I remember. But the photos?’
‘They were for a left-wing underground poetry magazine, Down Dirty and Not Rhyming. They never used them. I was in bed for a week with a chill.’
George worked at not smiling.
‘I thought I was being brave and free,’ said Anna. ‘I can tell you, being taken home by the police stark naked and frozen isn’t your finest hour. God, the look my mother gave me. But if you’re asking about my sex life, it has had its moments. I have had lovers. Not as many as you. You have always been naughtier than me.’
‘Have I?’ George thought for a moment. ‘I’ve probably had more lovers. I liked being in bed with someone. I loved that moment when you turned to one another. I felt wanted. But I’ve always been faithful to the one I had at the time.’ They reached Starbucks and went in. ‘Now I have Matthew and that’s it for me.’
They ordered coffee and found an empty table. This was a small part of city life and George loved city life. Until recently she’d always lived near the centre but now that she was in the quiet of the outskirts she missed the rush and bustle of people and traffic.
She’d always walked to work. She noticed many things as she went – the way the seasons made their mark in gardens, a certain cat that watched the world from an upstairs window, breakfast bickering from a house on a corner, music that poured from another, people at bus queues. She’d had her winter heart lifted at the sight of primroses in a pot by a front door. Sometimes walking home after a gruelling day – perhaps she’d spent time with a dying patient or seen a horribly injured accident victim – she found solace in watching lives moving through the daily routines of buying food, chatting, raking leaves, hanging out clothes on the line.
‘What happened to your clothes?’ she said to Anna. ‘You know, when the police caught you and took you home?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Anna. ‘I never saw them again. I had the loveliest velvet skirt. I missed that. The police wrapped me in a blanket. But they took it away when they delivered me.’ She sipped her coffee, stared ahead and said, ‘So there I was, standing in front of my mother stark naked and hair dyed bright green.’
‘I don’t remember you having green hair.’
‘The hair I dyed was not the hair that is on general public view.’
‘Ah,’ said George.
‘I did it for humanity, for freedom, for poetry, books, and to strike a blow for anarchy.’
‘Well, if ever there was a reason to dye your pubic hair green, that was it.’
‘My mother said I was a slut for leaving my husband and for cavorting in the street with no clothes on. I told her my husband left me because he was gay. So she said I was a stupid slut to have married a homosexual.’
George reached over and squeezed her arm.
‘I was devastated. I felt utterly shattered. Stupid. Unwanted. Naïve. It all floored me. I crawled away emotionally. Went to work on the poetry magazine. In my little bubble mixing with writers and book people I had odd affairs but I stayed safe, no falling in love, no commitment, and now I think I missed a lot.’
‘So what do you want to do about your teenage crush?’
‘It’s not a crush – it’s an awakening. Something inside is coming back to life.’ She stared into her coffee and sighed. ‘There are so many things I haven’t done. But mostly I regret small stuff. Sitting in comfortable silence with someone I love. Shared jokes. Meals. Planning holidays. I’ve shut myself away, afraid of relationships after my first absurdity and my mother’s mockery. My marriage was a surprise to me. There was no sex, obviously. And we didn’t get round to sharing other intimacies – underpants on the floor, sharing a bathroom, piles of washing up, bickering about radio stations. I don’t know about them and I might like to. It’s karma. It’s what I get for being stupid.’
10
Home
Is a Person
George was in the garden deadheading roses, yanking out weeds and thinking, working things out. This was something she did as she pottered in her flowerbeds. She’d wrestle with the vibrant growth that surrounded her and from the deep recesses of her brain revelations or solutions would appear and she’d toss a lump of unwanted grass into her canvas bag and shout, ‘That’s it. That’s definitely it.’
She shouted it as she threw a dandelion into the bag and set off across the lawn to the back door. She was excited at the thought of sharing her latest insight with Matthew.
‘It’s not sex,’ she told him. She clumped over the floor and sat at the table, giving him a gleeful stare. ‘She’s done that. Obviously. No, it’s the small stuff of a relationship. You know, the trivial intimacies that come with living together.’
Matthew looked up from his newspaper and said, ‘Huh?’
‘I mean Anna. She’s looking for a proper thing with a man. She’s noticed that in marriages people bicker and it doesn’t really matter because they know that they are safe. The other person, the one they’re bickering with, isn’t going to hit them or walk out.’
Matthew took off his glasses and stared at her.
‘It’s the business of liking as well as loving. We share a shower and I have never once complained that you use my expensive shampoo and have a strange habit of moving the showerhead as you get out. Often I turn it on first thing and get a blast of cold water. It’s annoying. But I won’t leave you over it. Then there’s the underpants thing. I’ve known men who take off their boxers and toss them across the room before they jump into bed. Something like that can be off-putting. Anna wants to find out if she can be in a relationship that will survive such behaviour. Companionship, that’s what she’s after. What I’m saying is, she wants to be ordinary.’
Matthew said nothing.
‘I’m ordinary. Husband, house, children, grandchildren, garden, ancient car. I’m so ordinary, it’s boring. But Anna isn’t. She dresses in an interesting way from charity shops, has far too much hair, stomps around and is so lost in her thoughts she forgets to speak to people. She used to be fearless. She is as a failed poet but not as a human being. That’s what she wants to be, a human being.’