by Emma Morgan
‘Did you not hear me?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m not getting your wine. Well, my wine. I’m not setting one foot in your kitchen. It’s your house.’
‘Are you sure you are OK, Annie?’
‘Fine,’ said Annie and crossed her arms.
He stood up and came round the piano to her and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
‘I’ll get the wine then,’ he said. ‘Bed?’ And he went to the kitchen. She looked round the room. The horse pictures were still there, the collection of Dickens, the bottles of spirits. In one of the games she had played with her brothers as a kid you got a tray and filled it with objects and then took one away and the others had to guess what was missing. She’d always won. There was something in the room that should have been there but wasn’t. She looked at the mantelpiece which had never fitted in this room, too big and not a real fire, one of those artificial flame jobs. She had always thought it looked naff. There were two china dogs at either end, two candlesticks, and then some horse pictures but a gap in the middle. Had it been there when she had last come, or had she never noticed the gap before? No, now she thought about it, nothing ever had been in the middle and it looked uneven. She was compelled to go and straighten things up. Tucked just behind one of the horse pictures was a card for a drinks party for an address in Harrogate. It was from ‘Rex and family’. She had only met Rex twice and not liked him either time, something to do with the way froth collected on his rubbery lower lip when he talked. She hadn’t got the impression he liked her much either, so perhaps this was why Laurence hadn’t invited her to go to the party with him. She hadn’t met any other of his friends or members of his family but had presumed it was because he wasn’t close to many people. For the first time it occurred to her that he might be ashamed of her. She was instantly angry. What right did he have to be ashamed of her? Just because they were from different backgrounds. Her mother came into her head saying, ‘We’re just as good as anybody in this street, Annie Barnes, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.’
Laurence called through, ‘Are you coming, Annie?’
She hesitated. Perhaps it was all in her head. She mentally reviewed her underwear. Grey silk. She looked very good in it. It seemed a waste to not show it off. So what he hadn’t said thank you again? And she didn’t want to go to Rex’s party anyway. She was just being over-demanding and like her mother and that was the last thing she wanted. She went into the bedroom and took off her dress.
‘You look beautiful, Annie,’ he said and reached for her and she let him.
This, Grace thinks, is because it’s all bollocks
Grace hadn’t spoken to Sam for three days, not since Sam had snubbed Eustacia. She was seething still, and finally she phoned Sam’s flat but Sam didn’t answer. This angered Grace even more, although she managed to leave a reasonable message. All right, she left three and they were identical.
‘Hi, this is Grace, could you ring me?’
Sam didn’t ring back. What sort of person didn’t have a mobile phone? It was beyond annoying. It was 9 p.m. Grace saw by her kitchen clock. ‘Our’ clock. She watched the minute hands move. She put on her coat and her boots and went out of the flat. She knew it wasn’t a good idea to do this but she did it anyway. She drove to Sam’s but Sam didn’t answer when she rang the bell. There were no lights on in the flat upstairs. Grace sat all night on the doorstep. She knew that it was a ridiculous thing to do, she knew this as she was doing it, and there was a part of her brain, even if it was only a small part, trying to persuade her to go home. The trouble was that she was stubborn, and her brain wasn’t using the right language. She didn’t respond well to commands so there was no way it was going to win. ‘Go home, you’re an idiot, what are you doing? This is obsessive and pathetic. I’m sure there’s a good reason she isn’t home yet. Go home.’ Grace ignored all of this. She had forgotten her gloves and her scarf and so she stuffed a hand into either sleeve and burrowed her neck down into her coat, using her breath to keep her face warm, but she got colder and colder, her bum on the cold stone step absorbing the night chill. She felt an increasing sense of panic. ‘Where is she? Where is she?’ And it was frightening, being out there, never knowing who was going to come by. There was a streetlight a house or two down and people came along the street and she heard them approaching and was relieved every time it was a woman. Nobody approached her and mostly she was in the company of the bins and an abandoned armchair. She tried not to think about rats. She did the calculations, willing time to pass and yet willing it to stay put at the same time so she didn’t have to lose faith in the fact that Sam hadn’t yet come home. It was past pub hours. Now it was past most bars too. Clubs would be shutting now. Maybe she’d stayed at Ellie’s but Grace knew that Ellie was on holiday. She must be with another of her friends then. Yes, that was it, she was sleeping the night on somebody’s sofa. She wouldn’t be home at all, so what was the point of Grace staying. Grace wanted to go home where it was warm and clean and there were no sudden noises, no taxis or car alarms. She wanted a cup of tea and her own bed, she wanted to go but she couldn’t make herself, as if, if she went now, all her efforts would have been wasted. She didn’t move, and she got colder and colder, and dawn crept in wan and grey and then it got light at last and the birds started. It was 8 a.m. It was morning and Grace had spent a whole night on a cold step and would never tell anyone she had done so because all she felt was shame. And then Sam rounded the corner and she was swinging her keys and when she saw Grace she didn’t stop. Instead she walked up the steps and stood on the one Grace was sitting on and she looked down at her without anything registering in her face. It was as though she had expected Grace to be there. And she didn’t look tired, she looked like a woman who had been for a bracing walk in the early morning. She was wearing her favourite earrings – peacock feathers, the tips of which touched her shoulders. Grace wanted to speak but she couldn’t.
‘Do you want to come in then?’ Sam asked and there was something of a smile there as she looked down at Grace, a small smile, the one you might use for a child when you’re tired and have had enough of them for the day.
‘If you don’t mind,’ Grace said.
Grace was stiff when she got up, it took a moment for her to unbend while Sam held the door open for her. Up the stairs but without accident this time.
‘Can I use your loo?’ Grace asked. She went in and locked the door. She weed the longest wee she remembered ever having weed. Then she flushed and put the seat down and sat on it. She felt numb. There was a knock at the door.
‘You OK?’ Sam asked through the door.
Grace was in no fit state to say anything.
‘I’m going to bed.’
Grace put her hands over her mouth. I won’t ask. I won’t ask. She got up and went into the bedroom where Sam was already in bed, facing the wall, and she took off her coat and jeans with shaking hands and got into bed. The covers on the bed were cold and she was shivering. She lay there not touching Sam and after a while she felt Sam caressing her back with long strokes and she wanted to turn into that hand and she also wanted to stay as far away in the bed as possible. Sam moved towards her so that the length of her was against Grace’s back, and she put her hand around Grace’s waist and hugged her. She pressed her lips on the back of Grace’s neck and yet she said nothing, no explanation, no apology, no questions. She moved her hand down Grace’s belly and pushed them into her knickers and stroked Grace. Then Sam rolled over on top of her, took her head in her hands, and kissed her long and slow and Grace spread her legs and Sam lay between them. She never said a thing, instead she did sweet things to Grace, touched her just so. Afterwards Sam moved away to the side of the bed, her back to Grace, and went to sleep, and Grace stayed awake and watched the light move across the ceiling.
This is Violet’s ill-starred evening
When Violet came out of her room Annie was standing in the kitchen with a gin and toni
c, staring into space. She didn’t offer one to Violet like she always did. She didn’t comment on Violet’s appearance either, which she should have done. Annie was wearing a knee-length black dress with a wide skirt and a string of big pearls around her neck. Her hair was down. She looked beautiful and Violet wanted to tell her that but didn’t.
‘Are we off then?’ asked Annie, as though she didn’t care one way or the other, as though she wasn’t normally a person who harangued Violet to hurry up, who actually tapped her foot.
‘Yes,’ said Violet. And knew then it was all going to go wrong.
‘You’re not living in this century,’ said Annie, after she had understood that not only did Sam not have a car but she had no mobile either.
They were sitting in a Lebanese restaurant which didn’t serve alcohol, it was bring your own, and Annie, as a gesture of friendliness, had bought three decent bottles, two of white which is what she and Violet drank at home, and one of red, in case Sam preferred that. Violet had forgotten to tell her that Sam didn’t drink.
‘Why not?’ asked Annie, who was looking down her nose at Sam’s jeans and T-shirt.
‘I just don’t,’ said Sam.
‘Are you an alcoholic?’ asked Annie, twirling a lock of her lovely hair around her fingers. Violet felt sick. That was one of Annie’s tells for dissatisfaction.
‘No, I’m not,’ said Sam.
‘You don’t like the taste?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Then why?’
Sam shrugged.
‘It holds no interest for me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I find being drunk dull.’
‘Fine.’
And Annie went to pour for Violet but Violet put her hand on top of her glass and Annie poured a little wine over her hand and didn’t apologize.
‘Don’t you want any?’ she asked.
‘I don’t feel like drinking,’ said Violet as lightly as she could, wiping her hand with a napkin.
‘Since when did you join the sober club?’
‘I don’t feel like drinking tonight really.’
‘Right. More for me then.’
Sam chose veggie food.
‘Are you a vegetarian?’ asked Annie.
‘I feel like eating this today,’ said Sam and she smiled in what Violet chose to believe was a conciliatory manner. Annie didn’t smile back. Violet’s own fake smile was as nervous as it could get and was making her mouth ache. Annie chose lamb and a great hunk of it arrived on the bone, semi-rare. Annie attacked it with gusto and then proceeded to wade her way through the entire three bottles which was, despite Annie’s prodigious head for drink, enough to get her drunk and since a non-drunk Annie was a force to be reckoned with, a drunken Annie was a bulldog.
‘Why are you fucking Violet?’ asked Annie, admittedly in a light conversational tone as though commenting on the ambience. This enlivened the sweet.
‘Because I like her,’ said Sam, as though she was used to being asked this question in public by a person she didn’t know. Violet had to admire her composure. Annie, unusually, seemed to be losing hers. Perhaps she should have had a drink herself. Or many.
‘But she doesn’t even know if she’s gay or not! Don’t you care?’ asked Annie.
‘No,’ said Sam.
‘Are you in love with her?’
‘Annie!’ said Violet.
‘It’s a relevant question.’
‘I don’t feel that it’s anything to do with you, Annie,’ said Sam.
‘I’m her best friend. I’m the one who looks out for her when she goes off on one of her idiotic man benders and so I have every right to do so when she gets in a mess with someone like you.’
‘Like me how?’
And Violet sat there, wishing she was in the coat cupboard at the nightclub she had sometimes worked at. She would be safe there, hidden under a pile of smelly coats.
‘You’re messing with her head because you feel like it. You don’t give a shit about her.’
‘I do care about her, yes. But I don’t think the fact that she is undecided about her sexuality is a problem and I think that you are way over-involved in the relationship between Violet and me, which has absolutely nothing to do with you.’
‘You can fuck right off, you self-righteous up-yourself bitch!’
‘I think you might have had too much to drink, Annie,’ said Sam.
‘I don’t want you in my house,’ said Annie.
‘That’s fine by me.’
‘Please stop,’ said Violet in the smallest of her voices.
‘Well, I don’t want you there. Not ever. I’m off now. You can fucking pay.’
‘That will be fine,’ said Sam smiling.
‘Violet?’ asked Annie, standing up unsteadily. ‘You coming or are you staying with Ms too good to be true here?’
‘Here,’ whispered Violet.
‘Right then.’
And Annie got her coat from the coat stand, knocking it over in the process, and stamped out on her high heels. ‘The lesbians are paying,’ Violet heard her say to the waiter on passing. He didn’t seem to know what to say and settled on, ‘Thank you.’
‘I hope she’s not going to try to drive home,’ said Sam, putting her hand gently on Violet’s arm. Violet put her hand on top of Sam’s to steady herself. It didn’t work. ‘Are you all right, Violet? Come home with me.’
And she did. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to, but she did.
This is Grace’s disintegration
It was falling apart and there was no way to put it back together again.
‘I told you – I don’t do family,’ said Sam.
‘I’m not surprised with a family like yours!’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘They were awful,’ Grace said or rather almost shouted. ‘They weren’t interested at all in your life and they obviously have a big problem with you being gay.’
‘That’s their issue, not mine.’
‘Doesn’t it make you angry?’
‘No.’
‘My sister only wanted to meet you! Why did you walk out? You could at least say you’re sorry.’
‘I’m sorry if it upset you but I did tell you.’
‘Why did you take me to Shrewsbury?’
Sam sighed.
‘I thought they might like you.’
‘Or you wanted to shove it in their faces?’
‘No, I thought they might like you. I wanted them to see that I’m with someone nice and that my life is good and then they might leave me alone.’
‘What do you mean leave you alone?’
‘They email me a lot.’
‘Saying what?’
‘Oh, you know, just stuff.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t want to go into it.’
‘This is what every conversation is like with you! You won’t talk about anything! I don’t even know why I bother speaking to you!’
Every time they spoke or saw each other now it didn’t work. There was a lot of slamming the phone down on Grace’s side. There was a lot of not answering the phone on Sam’s. There was sex used as a cross between a truce and a continuation of the war. Sex in no-man’s-land. She could no longer get from Sam what she needed and it made her feel as if all this time she had been a drug addict without knowing it and now the drug was getting withdrawn and what she had left were the symptoms of withdrawal – the low self-esteem, the tendency to either shout or beg, and most of all the panic that gripped her so hard that she could hardly eat. She wanted to be able to leave Sam but she couldn’t seem to detach herself. She wanted to get up and walk away but she couldn’t even get as far as the door.
‘I’m not dealing with this,’ Sam said on the phone in her most reasonable voice, the voice of a calm and logical person forced to cope with someone who was neither of these things. ‘I don’t like to be answerable to others. I need to do my own thing. I thought you knew that.’
> ‘Can I come round? Tomorrow?’
‘I’ve got stuff to do,’ she said, and Grace wondered if that was true or not.
‘You’re so far away.’
‘I’m only down the road.’
‘I mean I can’t get to you. I don’t know where you are any more.’
‘I’ve got to go. I’ll phone you tomorrow.’
Sam put the phone down and Grace stood there with her phone still in her hand listening to the silence. The silence was a great big place like a desert, full of cutting winds. Grace sat down on the floor and stopped herself phoning back by digging her nails into her arms until she made marks. Apparently, this was called self-harm. She called it damage-minimalization herself. She felt like the ice on the puddle Sam had put her foot through and was stamping down on again and again. All this time, all this attention and time she had focused on Sam, and for what? She had neglected her friends terribly, never mind the way she had ignored her sisters and done her job poorly to maintain a relationship with someone who was almost indifferent to her. Someone cold and unfeeling, which perhaps was partly her parents’ fault. But she was always making excuses for her. How much of this was Sam’s fault anyway? It was hers for getting into this mess. This is nothing more than an obsession that I need to stop. I’m the one with something wrong with me, she thought.
In the end, it was all repetition. One tune over and over. Until suddenly that was it, it had stopped, and Grace was left standing there, shell-shocked, thinking what, it’s stopped, and she couldn’t bring herself to believe it and she would have done anything, anything to crawl her way back to the pain but it was all too late.
This is Annie and the spot check
Annie was normally always prepared for a spot check. She had easily de-frostable food in the freezer, spare coffee in the cupboard, didn’t run out of milk, cleaned up after herself as she went along, cleaned up after Violet in her wake, made sure her sink was bits of food free when she went to bed at night, had drawers with those plastic things in them for segmenting your underwear, hoovered under the furniture, had an updated file for her accountant, and never ever failed to delete unwanted email. What she was not ready for was her mother. Her mother did not do the unexpected visit, her mother hardly drove herself anywhere, but here she was, at 11 a.m. on a Saturday morning, standing in Annie’s kitchen taking off her driving loafers and putting her heels back on.