by Amy Arnold
‘Terry,’ the woman on the sofa shouts.
She looks towards their front door.
‘Terry,’ she says.
And where’s Joan? I mean, you’d think she’d come out. She likes to know what’s going on in our street. She’s been here thirty-six years and knows a thing or two about the way people work, or she should know, she says, by now.
And now a man, quite a big man, a wide man, at least, is coming out of number five. The woman taps the leather sofa with her free hand and the man sits down where she taps.
‘Fuck, it’s hot,’ he says as he lowers himself.
‘Terry,’ she says. ‘Mind your language.’
Terry sits next to the woman whilst she finishes her toast. He shuts his eyes and tilts his face towards the sun and it’s only half past eight and already hot and above him, above the leather sofa, the swifts are screeching and circling.
The man splays his arms out.
‘Mind yourself, Terry,’ the woman says. ‘Mind yourself.’
‘Sorry, love,’ he says.
And now. Here comes another man, a man in tracksuit bottoms and trainers. A man who looks a lot like Terry but much skinnier, and much younger. A man with a tattoo across his collarbone. He’s standing facing Terry even though Terry’s got his eyes closed. Still, he’s standing facing him and from here on our front step I can just about make out the last word in his tattoo, which almost definitely says Regrets. Yes, I think that’s what it says.
‘Something wrong with us, hun?’ the woman says.
She must be talking to me.
‘I said is something wrong?’
And there isn’t anything wrong, no, nothing wrong, I should probably say. I was looking, that’s all, just trying to see.
‘Keep your eyes to yourself then,’ she says.
And I wish the man in the tracksuit bottoms would turn towards our front step, because what can it say before regrets, if it does say regrets, because I can’t be sure.
Big regrets, my regrets, all regrets, perhaps? I’m trying to see what comes before, but I can’t see, because he’s facing Terry, even though Terry hasn’t opened his eyes, and now I can’t look too hard, can’t stare, because the woman, the woman with the toast, wants me to keep my eyes to myself, which might be something she says to Terry too. But what can it say before regrets? It must say something, because how can you have regrets on your collarbone without anything else?
‘Get on in,’ she says, the woman on the sofa.
She flicks her hand, and the skinny man looks over at her and says, ‘For fuck’s sake. For fuck’s sake you.’
I can still see her from up here in Abbott’s study. She’s lying on her back on the sofa. Terry and the skinny man have gone, and she, the woman who flicked her hand at me, is lying right back and stretching her legs out. She’s a bit like Signe, lying there like that.
Lying, lying – one of my favourite homonyms. You have to hold on for the preposition. Lying on, lying next to, lying back, lying to, and if there isn’t a preposition it isn’t lying. Not in the way Signe or the woman from number five are lying. And there, see, she’s on her back again now, the woman outside, and I can see from here the writing on her top says Mon Amie. And if the skinny man would come, if he’d just come out I’d be able to see the word. The word that comes before regrets.
I know. I’ll put it into Google, regrets. Abbott would be pleased. He says you can put anything into Google and it always has answers. He says Google can suck you in. But I’ve never been sucked in. There’s no reason to get sucked in. I can shut the lid. It’s as easy as that. It’s easy.
OK. Regrets. Regrets. And here, look.
The 10 Biggest Regrets.
Here we go. And they always start at number ten. Why do you have to read nine smaller regrets to get to the biggest regret when the biggest regret is really the one you want to get to?
I wish.
I wish, they begin. All the regrets begin with I wish, which, if you take it on its own, sounds like the opposite of regret. So, I’ll type in wish, see. Synonyms: desire, longing, hope, yearning. Nothing like regret. Words with a future, that’s what they are, yes, a wish, a thing of hope, of opportunity, or it would be if it wasn’t followed by the past perfect.
Abbott says there’s no need, absolutely no need, to obsess about words. A word is a word is a word, he says. He thinks it’s funny.
You can find anyone you want to with Google. Abbott’s found all his favourite sportsmen. He follows them, that’s what he does. I could find anyone I want to from up here in Abbott’s study. Although it’s hot. Especially with the window shut. And the thing about flying insects, the thing is, that once they’ve flown, I mean, once they’ve flown inside, they don’t usually find their way out, because they don’t plan to come in. They fly in by chance, by mistake I suppose, and there’s only one way out and they almost never find it. It could be their number one regret.
I wish I hadn’t flown in through the window.
I could find anyone I want to through Google.
Abbott comes up when you type his name in. His photograph makes it look as if he’s doing important work at his desk. It feels familiar to see him there on the screen inside his study. But.
Kate Quin. That’s what I type.
And there she is. There’s Kate Quin, practitioner at Naturally Yoga. She’s sitting on a rock wearing a red scarf, a summer scarf. Behind and above her the sky is dark and light, the kind of sky that’s sometimes called moody, and you can tell the wind’s blowing, or was blowing. It will always blow, because things in photos never change. She didn’t like the wind. She was scared of it.
‘Call me a fool, but I’m scared,’ she said.
She linked her arm through mine. She wouldn’t let go.
Here. Testimonials.
I warmly recommend Naturally Yoga…
Kate offers something special.
I can’t wait to return for my next session.
Thank you, Kate.
Abbott found her first. He put his knife and fork down on his plate whilst we were eating dinner, he made a point of it. He cleared his throat and said Naturally Yoga seemed like a welcoming place, good for beginners. He said I should give it a go.
‘You’ll meet people. You’ll have fun,’ he said.
And here.
Classes, Technique, News.
News.
Come back soon for details of our Summer Solstice event.
The woman from number five has gone.
It’s impossible to lie down indefinitely. Nobody, not even Signe, can lie down ad infinitum. I wanted it in my collection, ad infinitum. Definite and infinite, that was the way it sounded. I wanted it, but I didn’t have any other two-word phrases. It would’ve opened up a can of worms if I’d put it in. So I didn’t. Abbott said there was always infinitely, if I wanted it, but it isn’t the same, not nearly the same.
The blue skies and heat go on. Every evening at six thirty, the weatherman points to a map covered in oranges and reds and talks about high pressure and jet streams. And every evening Abbott leans towards the television and nods and checks the temperatures on the map against the ones on his phone and says, ‘That’ll be about right,’ and nods again and stands up.
Charlie’s been wearing her summer dress to school. She pushes her long socks down around her ankles and by the end of each day her hair’s stuck to her forehead. She brought another letter home, more of a slip than a letter, I suppose.
We’d like to remind those who haven’t brought in sunscreen for their children that the sun is very hot.
On Thursday morning Abbott came downstairs without a tie. This morning the same, but waving his phone.
‘Hosepipes are out, that’s what they’re saying. National ban,’ he said.
Terry probably doesn’t care about the hosepipe ban. I can tell he doesn’t care about flying insects because the windows at number five have been open all week.
Earlier t
his evening the skinny man came out. He put a speaker on the arm of the sofa and played music from his phone. I could see him from Abbott’s study, sitting on the arm next to the speaker and nodding his head. He turned the volume up. Up and up until Terry stuck his head out of one of the top windows and said, ‘Too loud, son.’
He almost stopped nodding after Terry said that, but he didn’t turn it down, just went on nodding and once in a while turned his head towards the top window. It wasn’t too long until Terry said it again.
‘Too loud, son. Too loud, Jay.’
‘It’s not,’ he said.
He scratched under his T-shirt at his tattoo.
Most of the time, during the day, it’s her on the sofa. Terry and Jay never say her name. They only say you. Her name could be U, I suppose. U for Ursula, for Ulyana. U for Uta.
Sometimes she lies down and sometimes she sits. I heard her telling Terry she’s trying to get an all-over tan before the weather breaks, but the weather’s already broken. Day after day the same sky, the same sun, the sofa outside, the weather broken.
‘Come on in, Ash,’ Charlie says. ‘Come on in.’
She’s far out. She’s standing beyond the rock, twenty metres, maybe more, and she shouldn’t be able to stand out there beyond the rock, it should be too far, too dangerous, too deep. But it’s been so hot. The sun’s been sucking the lake up into the sky, slowly sucking, and I can see it now, can see what it’s been doing, is doing right now. Can see it, pulling beads of water from Charlie’s skin, plucking them, sucking them from her shoulders, and I’ll have to walk on past the rock to get to her. It isn’t that clean in here, Abbott’s right, it isn’t that clean.
I called to Kate from the rock that summer. She was standing on the bank and wouldn’t come in. I was on the rock, on the high point of the rock. I was standing there and the water was up, was right up, was lapping around my feet, even up there it was lapping. Brushing up, right up around the top of the rock, and I couldn’t stay long, that’s why I was calling. I couldn’t stay much longer.
Kate shook her head. Wouldn’t come. She could see the water was up, was up around the rock, had crept right up past the alder trees too, up there, all those metres back. The rain had been coming down, had been coming down all summer. The weather was broken. It was broken then, too.
‘Ash,’ Charlie says. ‘If you don’t come.’
‘I’m coming,’ I say. ‘I’m coming.’
I’m wading in, past the rock, quite a long way past the rock, and still wading.
‘Shall we swim? Just swim?’ I say.
And we wade out, further out, so much further than we usually go, and all the time, the sun on our heads, the sun on our shoulders, I can almost feel it plucking, snatching. Although. Under our feet, silt. And all the time, warm water.
Our waists, our chests, and we keep on wading, and we go on wading, and the swallows, yes, we go on wading until the bottom of the lake falls away, comes away, and after all, in the end, we lift our feet, because all of a sudden we’re not where we were, but far out, far enough out, and the water’s deep. Deep enough to swim.
Abbott knows.
Yes, as soon as we walk in he knows. He can tell just by looking, how far out we’ve been. He can see that Charlie can’t come down. He can see the mud on our shins, across her cheek, can tell by her eyes that she hasn’t come down, not yet. He looks at her and he looks at me and he says he doesn’t like the lake. He’s never liked it, in fact. And what is wrong with Tilstoke Baths, because everyone else in Tilstoke is fine with the baths. His mum, his dad, his whole family were always fine with the baths.
‘OK,’ we say. ‘OK.’
And later, quite a while after dinner, Abbott comes to me. It’s still warm when he comes, almost too warm still, and I’m sitting on my stool in the kitchen. I’m on my stool and Charlie’s on the step that leads out from the kitchen to the back garden. Both of us are reading, the pair of us, and Abbott comes. He tousles my hair. He waits for me to put my book on the table and when I do he says he’s sorry.
He says he can see Charlie likes the lake. He can see that much. He can see, yes, but he isn’t sure, not completely sure whether it’s clean in there, whether it’s OK for seven-year-olds to swim far out like that.
‘There are No Swimming signs, Ash,’ he says. ‘Quite a few signs.’
He looks at his Second Core, but swimming in the lake has got nothing to do with time. None of this has anything to do with time.
‘We’ll go to the baths,’ I say.
He kisses my forehead. He tousles my hair again.
‘Good. Good,’ he says. ‘You’ve always liked the baths.’
Joan caught me watering the wildflowers last night.
I went out there after ten because she’s usually done for the day by then. She used to say it herself. I’m done for the day by ten, she’d say, and sometimes she’d look at her wrist as if she had a watch, but I never saw her wearing one. Still. She used to say all sorts of things when she popped round. That’s what she called it. Popping round.
She’d stand at the front door and ask if we needed anything, because what are neighbours for? And she was on her way to the corner shop anyway.
She’d stand at the door. She’d stand there, and after a while she’d take a step inside and lean up against the wall. I liked it when she did that. I’d get comfortable. I’d sit down, sit in our hallway with my back against the opposite wall and listen, because she had a way with words, Joan. What I really mean is, she had her way with words.
‘You’re quiet,’ she said once. ‘Not like the rest of them around here. Not like them at number five. Can’t stop themselves from hanging out their dirty washing, if you’ll excuse the pun,’ she said.
Then she stopped. She stopped popping round.
I don’t know why she did. Perhaps we were so quiet she forgot about us, but how could she forget, because even though we didn’t make a lot of noise, we’d wave. We’d always wave, Charlie and I. We’d wave when we saw her at her window and she must have seen us, because we were right there in front of her, in front of her window, but she’d look right through us, or look away. Yes, she’d look away like she’d spotted a bird or something and we’d look too, we’d turn to look where she was looking, but we never saw a thing.
Joan caught me watering.
It was after ten and her curtains were drawn. I could see there wasn’t a light on in the whole house, so I got the hose out. The flowers had shot up. They’d shot up, the flowers, the grasses, almost overnight. It was as if they needed to grow before the rain came. But the rain hasn’t come, not yet, and by the time I went out there last night they were bent over. All of them, bent over and withered, that’s how they were, and they needed water.
I turned on the hose. I turned it on a bit, not too much, just enough for a small stream of water to come out. I didn’t want to waste any. Abbott had told me about the ban, but the flowers needed water and the earth was hard and there wasn’t any water left in it for the flowers. I turned on the hose and the moment I did, the light in the top bedroom at number four went on.
She pulled the curtains open. She was definitely done for the day because I could see what she was wearing and it must’ve been something she sleeps in, because I’d never seen her wearing anything like that before. It was almost see-through. See-through and loose and almost white and she was there in her bedroom with the light on and the curtains pulled open and I was in with the flowers, in with the hose, because the flowers needed water, they needed it.
I put the hose down. I put it down, then I slipped down myself, down into the grass. I stretched my hand out to the red campion and cradled it. I wanted to look like I was tending to it, like I wasn’t giving it water at all, but singing or whispering to it there in the low light. I thought Joan would shut the curtains if I was tending, not watering. She didn’t move. She was staring right out of the window into the night and I was in with the flow
ers, crouching down and it was warm out there, even though it was after ten and the water was trickling out from the hose.
I thought about waving. I thought that if I waved she’d turn away, the way she used to when Charlie and I waved at her. It was getting dark and she should’ve been done for the day and the water was still trickling, and was starting to pool, and I couldn’t get up and turn off the hose, because she was there at the window staring. Staring and wearing something almost see-through.
I didn’t wave. I didn’t wave because I didn’t like the way she was staring. She was looking right through me, her eyes glazed. She couldn’t possibly have heard the trickling from up there, she definitely wouldn’t have been able to hear, but maybe she could see the puddle of water at my feet, although I didn’t know how she could, or how I would ever be able to get up. How could I just get up and turn the hose off, with her staring out at me from the window? And I still didn’t know. Still don’t know, why she stopped popping round. It was after that summer. She didn’t say a thing and she was good at saying things, but she didn’t say a thing, she just stopped popping round and even when Charlie and I waved at her she didn’t wave back.
I’ve got into the habit. You only have to do something eighteen times to get into the habit. I read that somewhere. Every morning I watch Abbott and Charlie drive down our hill then I go upstairs. I head upstairs and look out from the window of Abbott’s study.
And there she is now. U, that’s what I call her, sitting on the sofa eating her toast. She’s getting an all-over tan, I heard her telling Terry, and that’s what’s she’s doing.
She’s in a routine. Every morning, as soon as she’s finished her toast, she lies on her back and sets her watch. She waits for it to beep and when it does she turns. She always turns the same way. Always ends up with her face up against the back of the sofa, against a wall of brown, waiting for her watch to beep. And there she is now. She’s in a routine, we’re in a routine. We’re waiting for her watch to beep, and when it does, when she turns, that’s when I open the laptop.