‘More,’ Hazel said, ‘that’s not enough.’
Dog-belly was breathing hard but he did not say a word, he did not cry out. There was nothing to stop him crying out and then we would have stopped the game.
‘Go on,’ Hazel urged. I thought just a few more wouldn’t make any difference. Hazel would not touch the ants herself, she made me do it. I put my jammy fingers into the formicary and ants crawled on to them, making tiny tickling paths up my wrist. I didn’t want them up my arms, inside my sleeves. I shook and flicked them on to Dog-belly, more and more until he was swarming. His skin had puckered into goose-pimples. Kneeling close beside him, I could faintly smell Wanda’s perfume and a sweaty boy smell like pencil shavings and mouse droppings. Yes, he should have cried out and then we would have stopped.
Ants were crawling up over his collar-bone on to his neck, stopping, waving their feelers, stopping as if to converse. So strange for them, my ants, in this new, pale, jammy country.
‘His mouth,’ Hazel said. ‘Look he’s got jam round his mouth. She picked up a sandwich and smeared more jam around his lips and then, when he screwed up his eyes, she smeared jam over them too so that the lids and lashes were clotted.
Dog-belly’s heart was beating so hard that I could see it behind his ribs like a fist beating to be freed. Each beat of my own heart was distinct and painful, like a high and tedious bell. Was it that he was stupid, or was it that he was brave?
The ants seemed to prefer his face. They swarmed up his neck and the mountain of his chin to find his mouth, leaving only a few stragglers on his chest; they gathered about his lips which were clamped shut and then about his eyes. And then he started to scream, a frightening sound like tearing tin. The ants were all on his eyelashes, feeding at his tear ducts where wet was starting to come out. He simply couldn’t stand it. When he opened his mouth to scream they trickled in, so he shut it again, clamped his lips together, squashing my ants between them, spitting, spitting out bits of dead ant, screaming again, jerking and jerking his body about.
‘Stop!’ I shouted, but he just screamed and screamed, his body thumping against the branch as if he would break his back.
‘Get them off him,’ Hazel said, ‘quick, shut him up.’
‘I can’t. You …’ I tried to get the ants off him but the touch of my fingers on his face made it worse, the screaming was too loud, not like the screaming of a small boy, and the ants were falling into his open mouth.
‘Stop!’ I shouted loud as I could right into his face.
‘Slap him,’ Hazel cried. ‘Do something!’
‘You.’
‘What the …’ the voice, sudden, loud, shocking as a rifle shot in our playhouse. Daddy’s head through the door. Dog-belly’s screams and convulsions. The lenses of Daddy’s glasses glinting like white metal, his wiry hair on end.
Disgrace.
An atmosphere in the house like lead.
Arguments behind closed doors.
The word torture.
Even Mummy too angry to speak directly to us.
We were forbidden to go out for a month. We were forbidden to go into the tree-house. Mummy would not look at us when we were in the room but a door, a wall, away from us we heard her voice defending. Only a game. Children get up to all sorts. Games get out of hand. They didn’t mean it.
It was late spring now. The sun shone heartlessly. The tadpoles grew legs. We had got our wish. Vassily didn’t come round again. Daddy and Mummy weren’t speaking except to fight. No one was speaking to anyone except Hazel and me but even we … we couldn’t meet each other’s eyes.
It was an evil thing that we had done. That’s what Mummy said. Daddy said nothing, not a word to either of us, not a word for weeks.
After the month was up, I went out to the tree-house with my comic. I still felt bruised inside as if something bad had happened to me. It was all right at school but home was painful. There was no need for them to hate us so much. We had done a bad thing. But we were sorry.
I saw Vassily at school sometimes but he kept his distance. Once he walked just ahead of me all the way home. I listened to the slap, slap of his feet and watched the way his hair grew a bit too long down the thin back of his neck. I was thinking of saying that I was sorry. I was thinking of telling him a joke. But then we were nearly home and it was too late.
When I went into the tree-house I found that my ants were dead. Beside the formicary was a carton of ant poison. The tank was knocked over and the floor of the tree-house was covered in white grains and the shrivelled flecks that were the bodies of the ants.
I never went in the tree-house again.
Two months later we moved.
LICK
1
Sitting by the fire in Wanda’s house. An electric-bar burns above a mound of flickering plastic coals. The room is small but a mirror opposite the window doubles it. If the curtains were open and it was daylight, it would reflect the moving limbs of the lime tree on the path in front. But in the February night it frames only the darkly flowered curtains.
I can hear juggernauts on the main road, roaring towards the docks. Inside the room there is just the sound of the mock coals creaking as they warm. No television, no radio voice, no music. Upstairs, very faint, so faint it might only be the sounds in my own ears, I can hear Wanda’s relaxation tape – waves breaking on a shore, gulls maybe, against a regular pulse of blood.
Wanda’s husband is away, driving his lorry to Marseille. And I am in Felixstowe visiting Wanda who is very sick. Soon I will go upstairs and offer her herbal tea and, if she likes, my company.
When she told me that she lived in Felixstowe now, I thought of the sea, of course, the buffs and greys of shingle, the queue of ferries and container-ships that stretch, sometimes, out further than the eye can see. And if you walk from here for half-an-hour, that is what you get. This house though seems far from all that. A tiny semi in an awkward elbowing position dominated by the roar of the dual carriage-way. Sometimes the windows rattle in their panes and the darkness outside is rusted.
On the mantelpiece, among the candles, ornamental frogs and bottles of pills, is a wedding photograph in a heart-shaped frame: Wanda in white satin, heartbreakingly radiant with confetti caught in her candy-floss hair, and Stan – whom I have never met – low-browed and muscular in an ill-fitting suit. His smile is abashed but also curiously sweet. And another photograph: Vassily, little Vassily holding a white fluffy cat. It is almost funny like a cartoon from MAD: a cruel haircut, great hearing-aids clamped to the sides of his head, a snaggle toothed grin. Looking closer though, looking as an adult at a child, I catch my breath at the vulnerability of him, the frailness of his neck, the open expression in his eyes.
There is a photo of Vassily grown too, a graduation picture. You would never guess, never in a million years, that they could be the same person. In this second photo, Vassily in mortar-board and gown against a bold blue studio background, you can see only too blatantly how handsome he became.
I wonder what Foxy is doing.
Last night I walked out. I am not here visiting Wanda purely out of the goodness of my heart. I have been planning to visit – some time. That plan might have stayed unrealised if Foxy and I hadn’t fought last night. If I hadn’t been casting about for where I could go, where I could run to that wasn’t home, that wasn’t anywhere she could find me, wasn’t anywhere where I would have to sit and listen for the telephone and know it wasn’t ringing.
‘I don’t want to be faithful to you any more.’
‘So it’s finished?’
‘Up to you.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t want to be faithful?’
‘I mean … just that.’
‘I know about Kris.’
‘Oh.’
‘So?’
‘That was just … stupid.’ She smiles at me – a little sheepish. Does she expect me to smile?
‘Why?’
She closes her eyes for a moment, sighs. ‘Do
es it matter now?’
She has not asked me how I know.
So if it is not Kris who is the danger, then…
The question hangs there between us, unasked but plainly in existence. Who is she? No. I do not want to know. A sensation in my gut like fingers slithering but if I know nothing definite they cannot get a hold. I will not ask her who it is.
‘I’ve been feeling … I don’t know … itchy, twitchy. You know? I love you and I like living with you. I will not leave you if you can stand it but knowing you, Zel … I don’t think you could stand it.’ The smile wry now. Loving?
I can’t help it. ‘Who is she?’
‘No one, no one in particular.’
How can I believe her when her eyes won’t meet mine? She is such a terrible liar it is almost endearing. Almost. Her glasses are pushed up into her hair, her lipstick is even more smudged than usual. Her hair is going grey, for Christ’s sake. In some lights she looks old. I like it. It makes me safe that she looks so much older than me but that is crazy because I am not safe. I am anything but safe.
‘Who said anything about a she?’
‘Not a man?’ For an instant surprise jams itself between myself and the pain.
‘No, course not.’ But you never know with her. She is maddening.
I flinched away from the hand reaching out to touch me and went to the window. Streets, houses, sky – across which an aeroplane makes a slow white scratch. Trying to breathe into the cramped space of my lungs, discovering my jaw was clenched, I experienced rage. A sudden flash of my fist in her face, smashing her perfect nose.
But no. Instead I went out walking. She didn’t try to stop me. I walked until it grew dark. I sat in the Minster breathing the antique air, listening to the pure voices of boys rising and evaporating on the stone. I sat in a café and let a cup of tea grow cold. I walked home several times but never went in. I did not know what to say. Before I went back, I wanted to know what to say.
I walked back to the Minster and gazed up at the bulk of it crouching against the glassy blue of the sky. A beautiful night, I suppose, crisp, shrill stars, an edge of frost. Late, where did the time go? The night a speeded-up film, lights blinking on and off, traffic, ropes of light, shop fronts dimly illuminated. My feet hurt, my shoes not made for walking. I stopped and looked in a shoe shop. Saw some comfortable leather boots, thought, what if I take a stone and smash the window and take the boots and run? Why should I ever be caught? And walking on, painfully now, shoes tightening with every step – and the growing sensation of someone behind me. I remember noticing nobody until then, though people there must have been. But now, late, alone, a male, following. The fear almost a relief at first because it was something else. I walked fast, biting my lips against the pinch in my toes, I walked to Second Hand Rose. The security shutters were down, the lights out, but standing back I could see a leak of light from between the curtains that showed Connie was in her flat above the shop.
I rang the bell. No answer. Awareness of the figure behind me lurking made me prickle. A thought: if I was murdered now … how sorry she would be. I dared to look round but the figure had hidden himself. I rang and rang: the bell was loud up there. Connie would have to come down. I stood with my back against the door, breath shallow and panicky, scanning the street, my thumb pressed over my shoulder on the bell, a long far off fizz of sound. Eventually I heard the thud of energetic feet on stairs, the rattling of locks. The door spilled light and I shoved my way in and slammed the door behind me. My heart was beating fast and hard and blackness crowded in at the edges of my vision. I bent down, my hands on my knees, breathing deeply, staving off a faint.
‘What’s up?’
I looked up at the young stranger who had opened the door. He was regarding me oddly, there in the half-light among the racks of clothes.
‘Thought I was being followed.’
‘Want me to go and look?’
I shook my head. Maybe I’d imagined it, maybe not. It hardly mattered now that I was safe inside.
‘I’m Zelda,’ I said, straightening up.
‘Yeah I know. Ian – I’m with …’ he nodded at the door to the stairs. He was very young, hardly twenty by the look of him. His bare chest was smooth, and there was the glint of separate, soft gold whiskers curling on his chin – though not what you could call a beard.
‘All right if I go up?’ I was already moving towards the stairs.
Connie, at the top, was dressed in a long white Victorian nightgown. A stock nightgown.
‘Zelda.’ She was in the act of lighting a cigarette, squinting through the bluish smoke. I was looking at the nightgown that went so oddly with her skew-whiff orange bee-hive. It was the most decorous thing I’d ever seen her wear – except she had no right to be wearing it. For once I did not care.
‘Can I sleep here?’
‘Course. Have to be the sofa.’ Her fag-holder pinched in the corner of her mouth, she started tipping clothes and papers on the floor. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘Coffee?’ Ian said. He had put a Greenpeace T-shirt on now and tied his hair back. I recognised him. He’d often been in the shop with his girlfriend choosing clothes and getting Connie to make sense of his pornographic dreams. I threw Connie a look but she refused to catch it. She fetched me a blanket.
‘No thanks.’ I sat down and pulled the tight shoes off my throbbing feet. ‘You get back to bed.’
‘Zelda …’
‘Not now, Connie,’ I snapped. I had to be alone, away from Foxy and alone. I wasn’t in the mood for Connie and her peccadilloes.
‘I’ll say good-night then.’ I watched a worm of soft ash slowly bend and fall from the tip of her cigarette on to the bodice of the nightgown.
‘Yeah.’
The bedroom door closed behind them. I could hear muffled voices, and Connie’s deep cough – but no sex, thank God. I could not have stood that.
I lay down and curled up under the smoky blanket. I closed my eyes and waited for my heart to slow. I experimented with a thought: why should I care if Foxy has other lovers? The cushion was scratchy under my cheek. I shifted. Outside I heard an ambulance siren in the distance. What if we both had other lovers?
I tried it but found anger rising and struggling in my chest. If you love someone with a passion then how can you share them? I cannot. I could not bear it. I could never switch off my imagination. How could I rest easy with Foxy in someone else’s bed. But she could bear it, wanted it. What does that mean? That she is a better, a wiser, a more generous person than me? Or that she does not love me with a passion that corresponds to mine?
I wanted to run, to somewhere she doesn’t know, where there was no possibility of contact. And then I thought of Wanda. I had received a postcard, sent via my mother, from Vassily, telling me how ill Wanda was now, how much she wanted to see me. I’d shoved it behind the clock, thinking feebly that I should visit but making no plans.
Curled foetally on Connie’s sofa, I decided that to Wanda’s was where I must run.
2
Dear Foxy,
11th Feb. Wanda’s house.
OK then, you get your way, it’s finished. When I leave Wanda’s I’ll go and stay with my mother or … I don’t know. I will be away for a week. While I’m away I want you to move out.
I want no trace of you in that flat when I return.
The flat might be in your name but it’s you who did this, ruined everything.
I’m going to a solicitor who says
Remembering all the good times we’ve had together, all the promises you’ve made, I’ve thought you made, though if I think about it I see how careful you were not to make.
There’s a postcard from Kris hidden in the kitchen drawer, came when you were out couldn’t bear to give it to you.
All my love (still) Kris.
Well I hope you’re happy.
I don’t care who you have any more, Kris, Dana, woman, man, donkey, banana I don’t give a shit.
You are a fucking cow.
But I love you.
I hate you
Remember the time when you gave me that
The stairs creak. The carpet glistens nylon in the electric light. I turn the handle gently. I don’t want to wake Wanda, if she’s sleeping, but no, but she’s sitting up in bed, painting her nails. The bed is strewn with grubby cotton-wool balls smeared with old brown varnish. The room reeks of acetone.
‘False,’ she says.
‘What?’ I put the mugs down on top of the pile of magazines on her bedside table.
‘Nails. Fell out with the chemo. That’s a very rare reaction.’ She sounds proud. ‘I’ve stuck them on but I want them this colour. Tango. You can’t buy them this colour.’
I sit down on the edge of her bed. She paints a final nail, screws the lid back on the varnish bottle and splays out her orange spiked fingers.
‘What d’you think?’
‘Yes.’
‘All those years, trying not to bite my nails, longing for talons. That’s so easy with false.’
‘Mmmm.’
Her rings are loose on her wedding finger.
‘That was nice knowing you were downstairs while I was asleep.’ The smile on her face which has grown so narrow reminds me of Vassily’s. I have never seen a likeness before, because her face used to be round and there was all the hair. I hadn’t quite been able to suppress a gasp when I’d seen her this time. She has no hair left at all. ‘Half of it went,’ she’d said, ‘so I thought sod this and had the rest shaved. Stan did it.’ Her scalp is very pink and fragile, the ridges of her skull showing through. Now I notice how small and delicate her ears are, each one pierced several times with silver studs and rings. Since I’ve been downstairs she’s tied a paisley scarf round her head and put on some make-up.
Easy Peasy Page 15