by Luan Goldie
‘Tris, I’m begging you.’
‘Okay,’ Tristan finally says. ‘I’ll think about it.’
CHAPTER TEN
Chapter Ten ,Mary
‘Mary, I didn’t know we were seeing each other today.’
Mary gives Harris a weak smile as she steps over the threshold and kicks her plimsolls onto either side of the stripy woven mat.
‘I’ve just got in.’ He closes the front door from the prying eyes of neighbours before kissing her. ‘I had a union meeting about next year’s exams. Can you believe it? On a Saturday? Went on and on.’ He walks quickly into the large room that makes up the living space of the bungalow and over to the hob, where he fiddles with the knobs and stops the hiss of gas.
‘I was trying out a new recipe – cannellini bean mash – but it doesn’t quite look edible.’ He laughs and wipes his hands on the tea towel that hangs over his shoulder. ‘Sorry, I’m rambling. Are you okay, Mary? I really wasn’t expecting you.’
‘Harris, I need to talk with you.’ She takes a deep breath but already feels her resolve waver. Something about the smell of lemons, Harris’s frequent failed attempts to cook, and his thin, perpetually tanned arms make her want to change her mind, to not end the affair, to divorce David, to marry Harris and to be with him always.
‘I can’t sleep,’ she says. ‘I keep thinking about what we are doing. How wrong it is.’
‘Oh, not this again.’ He turns away.
‘Yes, Harris. We need to stop. I am having nightmares. All week, these horrible dreams waking me up.’ She does not want to say anymore, for speaking her visions out loud somehow makes them more real.
‘You are stressed. Overworked again. I told you, stop taking on so many double shifts.’ Harris sits down next to her; the smell of tobacco on his skin ignites a craving for a cigarette. She takes the fob watch from her pocket and passes it from hand to hand.
‘Oh, your watch broke?’
‘I’ve had it twelve years.’ David had set the time eight hours ahead when he gave it to her. ‘Now you always know what time it is where I am,’ he said, but she immediately reset it to show her time.
‘Here, let me see if I can fix it.’ Harris takes the watch into his speckled hands.
‘No.’ She snatches it back. ‘David’s coming home.’
‘When?’
Mary shrugs. ‘He’s on standby for a flight. I’m not sure if he’s coming here directly or stopping by somewhere else. His brother is in Amsterdam – maybe he will go there first. What? Why are you laughing?’
‘Typical. So he’s going to show up anytime in the next few weeks and you will accommodate him?’
‘He’s my husband.’
‘Yes, but he doesn’t have to be,’ Harris says with a raised voice.
As he turns away the heaviness of what is not being said fills the room: the weight of the question she’s refused to answer, the unworn engagement ring studded with rubies as pink as the hibiscuses back home.
‘We need a break, Harris. Please.’ But she doesn’t act on it. Instead, she sits on the sofa and pulls one of the Indian elephant cushions onto her lap for comfort. ‘There is too much going on. I am stressed. My daughter is going back to work and I said I would help out with the kids.’
He groans. ‘She’s taking advantage. She only works two days a week.’
‘Yes, but she needs my help. I’m her mother.’
‘I know, but what’s this got to do with us? With what I asked you last week? Why can’t we talk about it, Mary?’
She taps the face of the fob watch with her short nails. ‘I need to call my work. I’m going to be late.’
It rings for a long time before being finally answered. ‘Hedley Ward, Nurses’ Station.’
‘Hello, it’s Mary Tuazon. I’m running late for shift.’
‘Okay, I’ll let the sister know.’
Mary recognizes the voice as one of the latest in a long line of lazy ward interns.
‘Tuazon? Hang on.’ Papers rustle, machines purr and a metal spoon clinks against something ceramic. ‘There’s a message here for you. Your husband called.’
‘My husband?’
Harris straightens his back, like a cat ready to pounce.
‘That’s what it says.’ The girl’s disinterest seeps through the line. ‘Says: In Hong Kong. Got direct flight to Heathrow.’ She pauses. ‘That’s all.’
‘You are sure? When did he leave this?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Well, is there a time on the message?’ Mary asks.
‘Look, I didn’t write this down, all right?’ She tuts. ‘It’s busy here.’
‘Okay, thank you.’ Mary puts down the phone and smiles at Harris. ‘Stupid girl got the message wrong. There’s no way he got a flight so fast.’
Harris appears to puff up his chest; his body, still frail, seems flooded with energy. ‘So he’s on his way? I feel as if this is it, Mary. You need to tell him. We can do it together.’ Harris uses a tone of voice Mary imagines he rolls out for his students with low self-esteem.
‘I’m not ready.’
‘You will never be ready. But you need to move on with your life.’
‘I took vows.’
The tea towel slaps against the coffee table as Harris walks off through the net curtains onto the patio.
Mary waits. How long it will take David to notice the spring in her step, the smell on her skin? She lies back on the sofa and tries to imagine the two alternate versions of her life: one where she goes back on her vows and becomes a shameful divorcée, and another where she continues to be David’s unhappy, waiting wife.
How can she make that decision?
Harris sits at the white wrought-iron table under the cherry blossom tree, which hangs over from the neighbour’s garden, his bare feet surrounded by a smattering of rotten pink petals. Mary stoops to rub a fleshy pink flower between her fingers and he scrapes the chair towards the edge of the wooden decking to bask fully in the sun he worships so much, while lighting his cigarette.
‘For olden time sake?’ she asks.
He hands her one and furiously flicks at the lighter as she takes the other seat. They both face out onto the messy garden, much of it claimed by the growth of wild flowers and overflowing planters. Mary watches two bees as they make double loops around the struggling zebra plants and moss roses he planted for her after she told him about her childhood garden. How could she even consider saying goodbye to Harris? To this secret life she has been building with him for the last year? She would miss him too much. They had spent the winter smoking on the patio among the dead plants, watching as the foxes brazenly entered to hunt around the composting bins Harris keeps at the bottom of the garden. She blushes as she thinks of all the times she has cheated on her husband with Harris. How self-conscious she was the first time, her body covered with fake tanning lotion, which stained her loose flesh a sickly yellow, making it look like the skin of the outdoor-reared chickens on the street markets back home. But after that first time, she never again felt the need to hide herself from him. Just last week as she lay in his bed, the windows open, the curtains billowing, she felt as she had all those years ago when she first met David. She was confident then too, but over the years she began to worry she was ageing faster than him, and that, as she took off her clothes, he was comparing her naked body to those of the girls he was picking up while on tour. Those floozies at the side of the stage.
Mary smokes slowly and waits for the threat of tears to pass before she speaks again.
‘He will not stay for long. He never does. A month, maybe. I will phone you when he leaves.’
‘So you have made your decision then? Another decision that does not include me?’ Petulantly, Harris uncrosses his legs and slides away from her, before crossing them again in the opposite direction.
She looks down at her uniform, at the fat white stitching in the wide hem below her knees.
‘You don’t have to choose him,’ he says.
>
‘I already did. He does not come home often; I owe him my time.’
‘You’ve already given him so many years, years in which you’ve waited and waited. And now you want to pretend that I don’t exist for a month.’ He shrugs. ‘So go ahead, imagine that I’m dead so you can get on with playing husband and wife.’
Why can’t he understand? It’s only a month. She pushes the nets aside as she storms through to the bathroom, where she rolls a large ball of tissue in her hand to help her get through the bus journey.
Harris waits by the front door.
‘Let me at least drive you to work.’ His eyes appear watery, but he does not look emotional, only annoyed, probably from having to go up against a man much lesser than himself, of competing against vows made in another time and anxieties that manifest themselves in the form of twitching elbows and bad dreams.
‘Okay.’
He slides his feet into his brown sandals and picks up the keys from the slim wooden side table. As they set off towards the hospital, Mary tries to distract herself from the silence between them. His car is messier than usual: mud-caked walking boots and some shrivelled orange peelings on the floor, a pile of his students’ workbooks on the backseat. He fusses with the tape player as the car slows at the traffic lights, pushing in the Simply Red album she bought him at Christmas. The first song is their song: ‘You Make Me Believe’. They look at each other and smile.
They could never go a month without each other.
Then a sound from above, a sound so deep it makes the windows of the car shake within their frames. Then a blast. It vibrates through the car.
Harris turns the tape off.
Moments pass, odd, thick moments, before a softer tremor is felt. They turn to each other, this time for an explanation. The doors of the bus in front open and people start to scatter out, all of them turning to face the same way.
Mary steps from the car and looks as well, into the distance, to a huge fire in the sky.
‘It hit the flats,’ the bus driver shouts.
Harris leans across the hood of the car, his eyes wide and dazed by the scene.
It is clear but Mary can’t yet accept it.
Then a voice, in shock and rambling to all who will listen, confirms, ‘That block of flats exploded.’
Mary’s block of flats.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Chapter Eleven ,Elvis
Elvis peeps around the corner of the block. The bad black boy went inside Nightingale Point a few minutes ago. There are two boys left by the wall; they cycle in little circles and do tricks on their bikes.
Elvis needs to get back to his perfect flat with his perfect things. Now is a safe time to do it. Quickly, he comes out of hiding and walks into the block behind a man pulling a brown suitcase on tiny wheels. The man has shiny black hair slicked back neatly like the men in the photographs of barber shop windows. Elvis has never seen him before, but hopes he is here to sell encyclopaedias, the kind with the gold spines where you can look up words like Serengeti and Kathmandu. The man grunts as he presses the lift button. People were not only dangerous on council estates but they were also unfriendly. Archie had warned Elvis of this as they ate their last full English breakfast together. As Archie scooped beans onto his toast he informed Elvis that brown people especially would not give you the time of day. It was ‘a cultural thing’.
‘Do you have the time, please?’ Elvis asks the man.
He checks his watch. ‘Eight-forty. No, sorry.’ The man counts some numbers under his breath. ‘I have come from the Philippines and have not yet reset my watch. One-forty.’
Elvis has had a bad morning but it makes him happy to know that Archie could still be wrong about some things and that not all brown people were too ‘cultural’. The man hits the call button for the lift again.
‘They are both broken,’ Elvis says.
Earlier Elvis had flicked through his notepad of information and found the lift engineer number. He called it to report its breakage but there was only a voicemail message saying: ‘Bolton Lift Services are closed over the bank holiday weekend. Please do not leave a message on this number.’
The Filipino man gives Elvis a half nod and starts up the stairs. The back of his red T-shirt is darkened with sweat, like a knot in a tree. Elvis waits till he can no longer hear the shuffle of the man’s shiny shoes on the steps before he slowly starts up the stairs himself. On the third floor he sees the plant lady, Beryl. She is the one who makes the third floor look so pretty with all the colourful plastic flowers. She sits on a dark wooden chair, which looks like it should not be outside in a stairwell landing but inside and around a table. She gives him a wide grin and he is happy to see someone friendly.
‘Elvis, love, how you keeping?’ she calls. ‘You all right? You look a bit peaky.’ She leans forward in her chair and squints at him. ‘You gingers do get red in the sun, though, don’t you? Need to slap on some sun lotion.’ Beryl dips down and feels the fake soil of her pots. ‘Good grief.’ She makes a tutting noise like you do when there is a nice cat that you want to stroke. ‘These are needing another watering,’ she says to him. ‘They’re sucking it up today. Roses, you know what they’re like. I went to the Chelsea Flower Show once, did I tell you? Even met Her Majesty. I’ve got some photos. Hang on, love, let me get them.’ She waves a hand and gets up slowly off the chair and walks over to her front door.
Elvis waits patiently for her to return with a shoebox filled with photographs. He has seen the photos before, yesterday and the day before that. He likes them but wishes they had more flowers in them and less of the plant lady’s blurred thumb and edges of people’s raincoats.
His tummy rumbles as Beryl points out Her Majesty. His pie, his lovely steak and kidney pie. He had forgotten all about it. It will be cold now and Lina will be mad. She will flick her nails at him and call him an idiot. He hates it when she does that.
‘I need to go home,’ he says suddenly to the plant lady.
‘Okay then, Elvis. See you later.’ She sits back on her chair and smiles at her photos.
He slows as he reaches the spot between the fifth and sixth floor, but it is quiet, the bad black boy is not there, only the faint smell of his rule-breaking funny cigarette. On the tenth floor he stops and turns to the skinny window that lets you look down onto the green. The windowpane is thick with grey, dried mould spores, but beyond it the sky is so blue and the sun so bright. He loves days like this. Maybe living in Nightingale Point will not be so bad after all and the bad black boy will come and say sorry and never smoke in the stairwell again. Maybe Elvis will go to the Chelsea Flower Show with the plant lady and have his photo taken next to a giant Helianthus Annus, which is the posh name for sunflower.
He watches as a plane flies across in the sky. It curves around the three towers of the estate and disappears behind him. Then seconds later it comes back, but this time, it looks closer. It turns slightly. One wing goes straight up in the air and the other points straight down to the floor. Then its big, round nose points straight at Elvis. He can feel himself getting excited and scared at the same time. A small trail of black smoke curls out behind the plane, showing where it has been, but there is nothing to show him where it is going. It looks like it does not know. It gets larger and larger, like when you are walking closer and closer to Nightingale Point. Then, there is a huge noise that makes Elvis put his hands over his ears and push his palms in. But the sound goes right through them. He squeezes tighter and tighter. Tight enough to collapse his soft ears and squeeze his head like a piece of clay on the creative table at the Waterside Centre. But no matter how hard he squeezes he can still hear the horrible loud blaring noise and then his own voice as it escapes his body. He screams, loud. As loud as he can. He is frightened. He does not know what is happening. It feels like the skin is being blown off his face. Tears stream from the corners of his eyes and run off his face horizontally. His bottom lip is pulled down, his teeth bared to the wind, and they become col
d. His mouth opens and he tries to scream but it does not come out, or maybe it does. He is not sure. He cannot hear it. But he can feel it in his chest, which goes raw from the effort; he feels his stomach empty of air, the muscles cramp down as they expel every ounce he has, until he has nothing.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Chapter Twelve ,Pamela
Pamela puts the phone down and bites her lip. She can’t believe she has to rely on Tristan. He was always tolerant of her, as polite as he could manage, but then there was a slight edge, a kind of jealousy that radiated off him each time she was in the flat. It was to be expected, Malachi said. It had been just the two of them for the last year. Maybe it wasn’t even jealously. She often wondered if perhaps Tristan simply didn’t like her. She didn’t like him that much either. So loud, flash and vain, he always needed to be the centre of everyone’s attention. While Malachi … Well, Malachi was kind, quiet, measured and caring. The kind of man that saved up all his money to replace her running shoes after the seams split and Dad refused to buy a new pair. The kind of man who, even when in a rush, stops on the third floor to listen as some lonely old lady talks about her plastic flowers. The kind of man who stepped into Pamela’s life and became everything she needed.
How long will Tristan think about helping? Maybe he won’t even do that. He could have put down the phone and laughed. Maybe Malachi is sitting there too, glad that he no longer has to put up with her. No, he’s not like that. She must stop doubting him; this is exactly what Dad wants.
She starts writing him a letter, everything she feels and thinks. He needs to know that she understands why he turned her away, why he needed time. It hurt when he denied her, but she gets it now. Malachi was looking at the bigger picture. But most importantly, and this part is so hard to put into words, there’s something else they both need to work out before they can get back together.
The pages slot into a white envelope and she sits by the front door, clutching the letter to her chest as fifteen minutes pass, then thirty, then almost forty. He’s not coming. Why would he? Tristan’s got his brother back; he’s Malachi’s number one priority again. Of course he’s not going to help her.