by Emma Morgan
She would go to work, she decided now, she was halfway there anyway, and Annie would be pleased with her for going, but as she passed the leisure centre she felt pulled inside as if the half-dressed people on the treadmills she might find in there were exuding a magnetized force. For a while she stood on the balcony overlooking the swimming pool enjoying the wet tropical jungle warmth and imagining she was somewhere in the far east, until the screaming of the boys dive-bombing each other ruined this illusion. Then she went down to the sports hall. It was deserted at this time of day, cavernous and dark and redolent of the nightclub where she worked if she was completely broke; it could have been the smell of dried sweat. Although here it also smelt of the rubber soles of trainers that had squeaked across the floor and seemed sadder in its emptiness, as though it would never see human life again. She walked across to the trampolines and hoped that no one would come in. When she was a child she had been good at trampolining. It was the only time she had been grateful for being so tiny. Now she stood next to one and took off her shoes and her socks, remembering the feel of her tight white nylon leotard with the badges her mother had sewn on the front and the way the jumping reminded her of how she had once, when she was very small, it must have been nursery, by raising her coat over her head flown a foot or two across the playground in a high wind. Was that a real memory or only a dream? Suddenly she found it hard to breathe. She bent over and put her hands in the gloves on her knees and tried to catch her breath. Her eyes filled up with tears that wouldn’t leave them properly, they seemed to have got stuck like the oxygen that was supposed to be entering her lungs. She sat down on the gym mat and breathed in great gulps down her tight throat. ‘The fear’ had descended. Her heart was hammering in a way that couldn’t be good and her chest was tight as if iron bands had been wrapped around it. She sounded like an asthmatic or a man who had once sat behind her on a train who had had a tracheotomy. If only she hadn’t left her mobile at home, she could have rung Annie to come and get her. Annie would have come for sure. But instead there was no one. Violet lay down on her side and tried to count her breaths. At that point, a voice interrupted her.
‘You’re not allowed in here, it’s against regulations to go into the sports hall unless a registered activity is taking place.’
Violet looked up from her prone position and saw a young woman of the fit and athletic kind wearing the sports centre uniform. Violet got up with effort and panted. Her left leg had gone dead and when she trod on it pins and needles went through her foot. She limped across what seemed to be the giant expanse of the hall trying to breathe as evenly as she could and to look normal. There were tears in her eyes and snot on her gloves. She thought she might be going to be sick. What would her excuse be? She wasn’t made for confrontation.
‘Sorry, love,’ said the woman, ‘didn’t realize you were, you know, physically challenged, come on, I’ll help you, I’ve had my training for the differently able,’ and she put out her arm and Violet took it with relief.
Outside again, having hobbled up the stairs clutching at the woman’s arm and been carefully helped off the premises, Violet rubbed at her face and considered her options. She could try to get home as quickly as she could. Or she could go to work. Work was nearer and so she chose that. She would take refuge there for a while and then she could always say she had a headache when she had recuperated and see if she could make it home then. She walked down the street quickly, one leg still a bit numb, and then started to jog, hoping that the sports centre woman wasn’t watching her. The air felt full of spikes. When she got to the shop, out of breath, Starchild was arranging wind chimes in the window against a backing of a purple Indian bedspread and a large statue of an elephant. The elephant was some kind of god apparently but Violet couldn’t remember its name.
‘Oh Violet,’ she said, ‘there’s a full moon tonight and my women’s group is having a ceremony, so I’ll have to leave at four. Is that all right with you?’
It was either a good thing about Starchild, aka Patricia, that she never remonstrated with Violet about the way she came into work whenever she felt like it, or a sign of her lackadaisical approach to the uneconomical business that her father funded.
‘OK,’ said Violet, taking her coat off and pretending that this was an average day in the shop. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea.’
There was only herbal because Starchild thought that caffeine was evil, but Violet sneaked in her own Tetleys and pretended it was Rooibos. Shit, she thought, I just had a panic attack, but she chose not to share this with Starchild to avoid a holistic therapy suggestion. Her chest ached. She stood dipping her tea bag in and out of the cup in a trance until she had made it far too strong.
When she’d come back with the teas, Starchild had lit some incense and put a Ravi Shankar CD on. Violet put the cups down on the counter. Starchild had closed her eyes and was waving her blond dreadlocks in time to the music. Her large breasts jiggled along. Every time Violet saw her do this she thought of Annie, who said that Starchild was a trustafarian cretin who needed to fork out for an adequate bra.
‘I’m thinking of stocking some menstrual cups,’ Starchild said, swaying from side to side.
‘What are they?’
‘You don’t use … tampons, do you?’
‘Er, yes.’
‘Oh no! You mustn’t, you mustn’t! They’re terrible, horrible things. The environment hates them, and they interfere with your yoni’s mucus ambience.’
‘Oh,’ said Violet.
‘A menstrual cup, yeah?’ said Starchild, and Violet automatically switched off. As Starchild wibbled on about a range of disgusting things that Violet preferred not to think about, she began to make one of the mental lists that helped her get through the day without spacing out entirely.
I think that ‘the fear’ is getting worse or at least more constant.
I just had a panic attack.
I should never have gone in there.
I should never have come in here either.
I don’t know if I can last until the end of the day.
I don’t know if I can last to the end of the hour.
How on earth am I going to get back home?
‘So, yeah, then your feminine balance is restored!’ said Starchild. ‘Incredible, right?’
‘Incredible’ was one of Starchild’s favourite words and with its pronunciation Violet began listening again. She needed to get a pen and paper and write down the list before she forgot it and perhaps that would help.
‘Incredible,’ she said.
‘I knew you’d understand,’ said Starchild, and hugged her. She smelt of musk, incense and damp, the exact same odour as the shop. Starchild began to twirl her hands in the air in time to the music.
‘Now what do you think about genital piercing because I’m thinking about …’ she said, and Violet began to look for a pen.
This is Annie and Laurence (II)
Annie cared about good etiquette so it normally didn’t take long for a potential romantic interest to annoy her. It’s probably not that I’m discerning, she thought, just easily riled. She didn’t see that as a character fault, though. A meal was a good way to sound someone out, it got the job done much more quickly than a drink. So many men had poor table manners, she had found over the years. It didn’t take a lot – elbows on the table, a wodge of food tucked into a cheek while talking, the inability to wait for another person to get their meal before you started yours, a lack of serviette control or flecks of food on the lips. That’s that then, Annie would think. But this Laurence, his table manners weren’t half bad, they might even meet her mother’s standards. Moreover, he pulled out her chair, checked she wasn’t in a draught, and suggested that she try the wine first. She was impressed but pretended she wasn’t. No need to let him know that he’d passed that test, she thought, and considered sleeping with him when he asked for the bill and wouldn’t let her see it. But she’d never slept with a man on the first date and she wasn’t about
to start now. She did however agree to going back to his flat for ‘coffee’. Was that reckless? Her mother wouldn’t approve of that and Annie felt a flutter of naughtiness that she found titillating. She did want him to kiss her, that much was certain. Just as well they’d both eaten spicy food.
When they got to his flat after the meal, she did a quick assessment and a surreptitious dust test with the back of her hand. There was none. ‘A place for everything and everything in its place,’ as her mother liked to say. And what’s more he had proper wood floors and not cheap laminate. She couldn’t abide laminate. She was surprised to see that he had an old upright piano in a corner and was also taken aback by the silver-framed pictures of horses which stood on top of it instead of the more expected family shots.
‘Do you play that thing?’ she asked him.
‘It’s out of tune,’ he said. ‘Sauvignon Blanc, Annie? Or would you prefer something harder?’
‘What’s with the horses?’ she said when he brought her the wine. Much to her confusion he was also carrying a violin case. ‘Don’t tell me,’ she said, ‘you’re a gangster.’
‘Close,’ he said. ‘Royal College of Music. What would you like to hear?’
‘What have you got?’ she asked.
‘Anything you like. Lady’s choice.’
He took off his linen jacket and draped it carefully over the side of the sofa. Then he rolled up his sleeves and got out what looked to her like a battered old instrument you might find in a junk shop for a fiver and put it under his chin. He picked up the bow.
‘ “Come on Eileen”,’ she said, for a laugh, not expecting him to play it. But he did play it for her very slowly and she was surprised. She’d never met anyone else who could play more than Chopsticks on the piano. It sounded sad the way he did it and not like the song she had once danced to at her retro eighties-themed school disco with a lad she had later had to deck because he tried it on. Then he played a very fast piece that sounded like music a Russian gypsy would play. It was too show-offy for her tastes. Then he played something else that she didn’t know because she knew bugger all about classical music but it was beautiful and it reminded her of churches. It brought tears to her eyes.
‘Thank you,’ she said when it was finished, and meant it. ‘Isn’t it great just to be able to do that?’
He smiled. He was sweating lightly and he smelled strongly of man. Eau de man, thought Annie, one of my favourite smells. He put the violin and the bow back into the box and took it away. He came back and handed her his clean white handkerchief. She wiped her eyes with it and hoped her face wasn’t smeared. She should go to the loo to check.
‘Pity you’ve put that thing away now, I was going to ask you if you knew any Johnny Cash,’ she said.
He sat down next to her and made to put his arm around her.
‘I’ve got to go to the bathroom,’ she said, embracing her mother’s ban on the ‘common’ word ‘toilet’ and removing herself from his embrace. In the bathroom, she cleaned up her mascara and redid her lipstick carefully. Then she ran the water in the sink and looked in all his cupboards. His towels were clean and piled up neatly. His toothmug wasn’t gunky. He hadn’t chewed his toothbrush to bits. He had only two bottles of aftershave. She sniffed them both. Pleasant and obviously expensive. There was nothing dodgy anywhere. Was this a good thing? Surely, he must be hiding something even if it was only a giant packet of condoms. In her experience, they always did. She had run out of time to go and search his bedroom drawers and so she went back to him. He was sitting on his sofa with a body language so expansive that he looked like he wanted her to sit on his lap. She sat at the other end of the sofa and he leaned towards her. She leaned back.
‘I’m not into one-night stands,’ she said. There was no point beating about the bush. There never was in Annie’s opinion.
‘Technically this is night two, if you count the party, that is.’
‘I don’t, and I’m not going to sleep with you tonight.’
‘What a pity,’ he said.
‘Well, at least you’re honest.’
‘Better to be, I think. What would you like to do instead? Shall I play you cockney standards on the old joanna or perhaps you would like to listen to a record? Or, if lengthy and acrobatic intercourse is unfortunately out of the question, we could go for a drive,’ he said.
Annie had been expecting to be fending off his hand getting up her skirt by now and was confused.
‘Why would I want to do that? It’s cold out and we’ve only just got here.’
‘You’ll see,’ he said, and he stood up and held out his hand. Annie didn’t like being directed but swatting him away seemed rude. She could always let him take her home, now that she had ascertained he wasn’t dangerous, just a musical bloke with a strange liking for horse pictures. She took his hand and he held out her coat for her and took her outside and helped her into his old Jag. Annie had a Mazda herself and liked to read Autocar and she had approved of the Jag when she saw it, not least because it wasn’t middle age crisis red or drug dealer black but a practical racing green. Less naff than a BMW too. They drove some distance at perhaps too boy racer a pace and parked, looking down over the city lights. It was blowing a gale and a half, buffeting the car; it felt as if they might take off.
Now Annie was even more confused, and the Jag’s heating was erratic and only making her knees warm and the rest of her was chilly and she had no idea what was going on.
‘What is this?’ she asked. ‘An American movie? Are we going to make out? Or are you going to do away with me?’
That sudden realization made her retreat further into her coat. What if he was a murderer after all? Nobody knew she was up here. She had been pleased to see there were no other cars when they had arrived in case it was the kind of place where people indulged their curious sexual habits, but maybe the lack of others wasn’t a good thing after all. She reached for the phone in her handbag. Let him try to overpower her, just let him try. But what if he had chloroform? Is it possible, she also wondered while she was thinking this, that I have watched too many films?
‘No, I like to do this now and then,’ and he turned to her with a serious expression on his face and leant towards her. She flinched back.
‘I’m not going to hurt you, Annie,’ he said softly and took her cheek in his hand and kissed her. It was a good kiss on Annie’s kiss scale, not mind-blowing, but good and firm. She kept hold of the phone, though. Turning away from her then, much to her surprise, he wound down his window all the way to the bottom and turned the car stereo up loud so that the music blasted out into the night, Johnny Cash growling at top volume. Her hair blew right into her mouth. It was like being in a wind tunnel with follic whiplash.
‘Relaxes me,’ he shouted over the music. ‘Work can be stressful. I expect you know what that feels like.’
And he sang along to the music and was perfectly in tune. It was ‘Folsom Prison Blues’. Her favourite. She kept her mouth shut because she wouldn’t be in tune herself. It was all very unexpected and Annie didn’t normally like the unexpected, she liked to know where she was with things. He didn’t try to kiss her again but felt for her hand and held it, stroking her palm with his thumb. After a while she wound down her own window and the wind blasted in on her side too and the music moved around them and through them in a way that felt to Annie like being purged. They said nothing after that, there didn’t seem to be anything that needed to be said, and Annie felt the sense of time getting away from her that she had constantly, right from when she got up in the morning to when she got into bed at night, being sucked out of her by the wind. There was always too much to do, there was list after list after list, and yet here on the top of the hill the internal monitoring machine that maintained such a tight hold on her life seemed to switch off. It was the most relaxed she had felt in years. After another ten minutes of this he closed his window and she closed hers and they drove home in a silence that should have been uncomfortable with s
omeone you had only just met but which was instead deeply companionable, as if they were old friends. After he had stopped the car outside her building and switched off the engine he came round and opened the car door for her. She got out.
‘I must look a right state,’ she said, trying to brush her hair down with both hands.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said and took her hands and held them in his. ‘It’s been wonderful to spend time with you this evening, Annie. I hope you liked the music.’
‘Do you do any rockabilly?’
‘Does that mean I am allowed to see you again, because I would love to.’
She kissed his cheek. There was no lipstick imprint to rub off. What a state to get into she thought. She clacked in her heels up the steps of the building and found her keys and when she turned back he was standing there with his arms crossed looking at her as though she was a treasure he had found. She gave him a wave and let herself in. I could do with some adoration, she thought, it’s very good for the skin.
This is Grace and the contact sport
Dolores said she did not know anything about that girl except her name was Sam and she worked in the park as a gardener. She looked gleeful about Grace having asked.
‘You like her, no?’ she said.
‘I’ve only just met her and, I don’t know, I wanted to see her. Tell her about my ears.’
Grace tried to underplay it but she still blushed. She fiddled with her studs, which had gone crusty. Dolores patted her cheek.
‘Yes, you have done them. Very nice. I will try and find out for you but I think you should go now, go to the park and look for her. You work too hard, it’s good for you to think about love for a change.’