‘Some would argue that,’ Mac whispered back and I felt pleased as Punch. I was impressing him already. I had The Birds sussed.
When the first reel ended it made me jump – the little jolt and the bright dots pocking the screen, in the top right corner – even though I knew it was going to happen, as Mac had already left me and bounded up to the projection booth. It was jarring, how one reel ended and another one started. Precarious. Jeopardy, that’s how Mac had put it. It seemed I was partial to it. Someone tried the door handle just as Mac sat back down, giving it a good old waggle, and I pretended to look horrified and then started giggling, my hand over my mouth.
‘You like danger!’ Mac said to me, his eyes flaming behind his glasses.
‘A little.’
In the second reel, in a quiet bit, when Melanie was talking to Annie, the jealous schoolteacher ex of Mitch’s, in her living room, there was a tapping noise. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. Over to our right.
‘What the bloody hell’s that?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Mac.
Melanie and Annie continued their tense interplay. The tapping continued.
‘Seriously, I’m freaking out. What is that?’
Mac burst out laughing and showed me his biro, tapping against the wall.
‘You sod,’ I said, appreciating the man’s childish streak, and he put his arm round me and pulled me in close as Annie and Melanie discovered a hideous dead gull on Annie’s doorstep. I liked snuggling in and feeling unsettled in Mac’s arms as the movie got more and more eerie. Deliciously on edge.
‘You enjoying it?’ he asked me, as Melanie smoked on a bench in front of the schoolhouse, a jungle gym in the playground behind her – crow after crow alighting on it until there’s a terrifying murder of them (clever, that Hitchcock).
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Bloody hell, that’s a lot of birds!’
Mac laughed. ‘I’m going to write that down,’ he said, pretending to reach for his pen. ‘I like your insights.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Get used to them.’
And so the affair began. We didn’t go for coffee again; Mac didn’t hang around outside my seminar room, whistling and on spurious pretexts. I just used to go back to his little flat at the end of every night. I’d say goodbye to my friends, leave the students’ union – the Monday-night disco, the Friday-night disco, the frequent gig nights – then head alone to Westwood. Afterwards, I would run home, back to my halls, the thrilling Midlands wind in my hair, my scuffed DMs flying over the concrete slabs of sixties municipal glory. Hoping no one would see me.
Luckily I didn’t live in the same halls as my fellow disco buddies, people on my course or – worse – students on Mac’s course (I knew who all of them were, lucky bastards, although now I was the lucky one). I didn’t research properly when it came to living on campus – typical me, impetuous, impatient, easily swayed – I went by the prettiest accommodation name and the prettiest boy who showed me round. The best place to be was Rootes, a long block facing the main university building. I was in Whitefields, a series of weird, angular buildings, like bashed-out hexagons, which were two storey and had two shared bathrooms and the obligatory hideous kitchen with ‘don’t touch me’ labels on all the boxes of cereal. Gone-off milk. Fray Bentos pies in tins. There were halls with en suites, for God’s sake, on other parts of the campus – why hadn’t I known about them?
Still, number 21 was close to one corner of the students’ union, where there was an exit, so it was noisy all the time, but close to stagger in and out of. And, better yet, my route from Westwood back to my room meant I could run there, like a mad, wind-swept homing pigeon (who really didn’t want to go home; I would rather stay with Mac) without having to pass through other halls and the threat of someone I knew looking out of a window.
The sex was … illuminating. Mac did things that were totally new. He would go down on me, which was always a wonderful surprise; he’d hoist my legs high into the air, or over his shoulders, making me laugh and yelp; he would shunt up behind me, like a lazy locomotive, to assume the spoons position and do me that way, and as he did I would clutch the iron railing of his bed base, my thumb grazing the edge of his mattress, or bite at the nail of my left forefinger. I felt other to myself, I felt beautiful; I felt I had been cast in a sexy love story as the tantalizing lead. I experienced the world revolving all the way around me.
The experience was different every time with Mac. Sometimes I was thrashing around in the eye of a storm, everything torrid and frantic; sometimes it was like lying in a meadow on a dreamy summer’s day while the sun drifted over me in soft waves; other times I was drowning like Ophelia, drunken and sated and dragged down by heavy pond weeds into a heavy elixir of bliss. Oh, I felt all sorts when I was with Mac. But most of all, I felt that life held infinite possibility, as long as I was with him.
‘Would you bring lovebirds to my door?’ he asked me once, after a particularly lively session.
‘Of course,’ I said, all cocky. ‘I kind of did, didn’t I? I pursued you. And I got what I wanted.’
‘The Melanie Daniels spirit?’ he suggested.
‘If you say so,’ I replied. ‘Though I’d call it my own spirit. Yes, I would bring you lovebirds – would you bring them to me?’
Mac smothered me in kisses. ‘Always.’
When I wasn’t with him, I was bored, grumpy, biding time, treading water. I would laugh with people at McDonald’s in Leamington Spa, but think about being in bed with Mac. I would stomp to the Fine Young Cannibals at the Monday-night disco, but I would be plotting how soon I could leave to go to Mac’s room. I would scribble notes in lectures about Shakespearean verse, whilst resisting the childish urge to doodle our names on the back of my notebook, inside a biro love heart.
I had to tell Becky quite early on. She was my friend; I cared what she thought of me. And the way I was acting was really weird: declining to go back to anyone’s room for bacon sandwiches after the union. Turning up for 10 a.m. lectures (10 a.m.? Good lord, it was the crack of dawn!), wild of hair and eye, struggling to repress an enormous grin as I opened my A4 notebook and pretended to concentrate. She was even wilder-eyed when I told her.
‘Bloody hell, Arden!’ she said. I was cross-legged on her bed, in Rootes. She had a duvet cover with hippos on it and was wearing something spectacular in tie-dye. ‘Can you get kicked out for that?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said, separating my toes through the foot of my tights. ‘I don’t think he can, either. Frowned upon but not a sackable offence, apparently. Mac says keep it discreet and everything will be OK.’
‘I can see the attraction,’ she said, and I knew she was shaking her dyed purple head in impressed disbelief. ‘He is fit. And cute. And so bloody clever. Lucky you, I suppose. Is he married?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Arden!’
I had never felt more like my mother’s daughter. But I wasn’t ashamed. I was determined, resolute, unrepentant. There was no way I was going to stop. ‘So? What does it matter? She’s a hundred miles away. I don’t know her. She’s never going to find out.’
That he was married had never even entered my head, but someone I knew had mentioned in passing, while going on about the great Mac Bartley-Thomas, like everyone always did, that he had a wife and she was a fellow at Sheffield University. I had been taken aback – momentarily – at the news, had felt a slight chink in my brazen bravado – momentarily. I was in the students’ union at the time, propping up the bar with a pint of dry white wine. The same Mac-adorer had then added, in passing, that Mac’s wife did Classics, which had always sounded deathly boring to me – all that nonsense about Greek gods. It was enough for me to swallow down my momentary misgivings, along with my revolting wine, and imagine Mac’s wife as a hippy, an over-earnest academic with a steely bob (possibly prematurely grey) tied on top with a jaunty ribbon, sensible shoes and long skirts. It wasn’t giving Mac much credit, but that wasn’t the point. The point was I just didn�
�t care about her. I didn’t care that he was married. I was in too deep: I wanted Mac and he wanted me; nothing and no one else had to be on my radar.
‘How long do you think it will go on?’ Becky wanted an end to it already, I could tell. She wanted me back being like everyone else. Snogging blokes our own age, partaking in those bacon sandwiches until 3 a.m. But I couldn’t be the same as everyone else.
‘Who knows?’ I replied, but I thought it would go on for as long as I wanted it to.
NOW
Chapter 6
I try not to think of my ex-husband too often any more. It’s best if I don’t. I prefer to erase our eleven-year relationship and our ten-year marriage from my mind, if I can. Sometimes, though, I get a little reminder of it – a snippet, a soupçon, like this morning, when a letter plops through the letterbox like a hand grenade – a missive from Christian’s solicitor asking me to send on Christian’s collection of football annuals. I finish my tea and, my hands trembling despite themselves, go to my laptop and quickly compose a letter back – I have work in an hour – saying Christian really should have taken all his possessions with him when he moved out of the marital home five years ago, not leave most of them behind so he would give himself a reason to continually harass me. With fake bravado, I remind Mr Tobias of the restraining order. I tell him I have got rid of all traces of Christian now, including the football annuals. The very last thing of his was a pair of shoes I found wedged at the very back of the wardrobe. They had ‘Help Me’ written on them in Tippex and he wore them on our wedding day, when he didn’t need help as he was getting everything he ever wanted. I should have worn the bloody things.
See, fake bravado.
I don’t want to receive any more letters bearing that man’s name. Christian. Not for the first time I think how highly ironic the name is for the man who couldn’t be further from one. It’s almost amusing; I can almost hear the laughter now, all the way to the women’s refuge …
I need to get ready for work. It’s the second of January; I spent yesterday, New Year’s Day, with Julian and Sam. They invited me over, cooked me a roast and we played Monopoly, one of Julian’s childhood favourites. I enjoyed seeing how in love they are; how close. They have a lovely kind of teasing relationship which suits Julian, I think. I’m proud of him. When he wanted to go into the City like his errant father, Felix, and his ex-stepdad, Christian, I was worried about several things, including him not going down the university route, like I had, and the possibility of him turning out like either of those terrible father figures, but he wanted to get out there, start earning, save for the property ladder; build his own walls around him. Julian’s in something called Futures – I’m probably being naïve but that sounds kind of hopeful to me – and I’m convinced he has a great one. He certainly has things a lot more sussed than I had at nineteen. He’s working in a great job, being half of a rewarding relationship; not playing up, guzzling cider and black and seducing married Film Studies lecturers … I am fiercely proud of my boy.
I send him a quick text.
Hi J, I know you’re at work already but wanted to say thanks again for a great day yesterday. Mum xx
A text pings back.
My pleasure, mum, was great to see u. Sorry I thrashed you at Monopoly (again)! X
I smile; he loves that game. My heart also contracts a little: Christian used to play it with him, when he was in our lives, as a kind of sadistic humouring. He’d let Julian assemble a decent property empire around the board, from Whitechapel to Mayfair, including a handful of Utilities and a couple of train stations, then accidentally on purpose put a bomb under it all, aggressively swiping the board clear with his arm (‘Oops! Clumsy me!’) or standing up and announcing he was bored and he had to go (‘Sorry, son!’ The way he called my boy ‘son’ used to kill me). What hurt the most was Julian’s simple and eternal optimism that Christian wouldn’t do it again the next time (hope over experience as misplaced as mine). In the end, I gave the game to the charity shop, but I rebought it last year, and when we play now, I’m thrilled to see my boy’s face light up with childish delight when he’s able to buy a hotel for Pall Mall or something, unhindered.
I didn’t get home until late last night. At about seven o’clock, as my iron landed on Free Parking for the seventh time, I thought of Mac and Ward 10 and wondered if he was wondering where I was. But I would go tonight.
I shower, get dressed in my strict-looking grey skirt suit and pussy-bow blouse, eat my microwave porridge. On the way down the street I post the letter to Christian’s solicitor, wishing I could post all my remaining thoughts about that man along with it. The divorce was a dragger – all those letters going back and forth between his solicitor and mine; all those unreasonable demands of his, right to the bitter end. I won’t countenance one more of them. I have to be brave. Still.
Work is dull and is also a dragger today. No one is really in the mood. The Cedars call again, saying Marilyn is complaining about the food. I do what I can to try to fix things, which is to gently tell the staff she’ll just have to put up with it. At almost nine hundred pounds a week – funded by the selling of her bungalow – The Cedars is as good as it gets, I’m afraid. Mum was never bothered about food anyway, as her cooking from about 1975 testified. Before that, if my memory serves me right (something she never did, after 1975 …) she had some good moments: coconut rock buns, a killer moussaka, a vanilla-y cake in the shape of a lopsided Paddington Bear on my fourth birthday that was delicious. Things made with love and care from a warm kitchen where a hug from a floury apron over a fifties sundress was not unknown. Those moments did not last.
I allow myself to get hauled to the pub at lunchtime – not The Long Good Friday, but The Crown, the tiny pub across the road from us – an early two fingers stuck up to Dry January, apparently, or ‘Cry January’ as Charlie has decided to call it. I haven’t been here for a long time, either. Years, in fact. It’s been done up and now has wooden floors and high stools with smooth walnut-veneer seats that cup your bottom. Charlie and I decide we don’t want our bottoms cupped and move to stand at the bar.
‘So, Hall,’ he says, leaning against the bar with his lager and lime, like Del Boy, ‘I’ve finally got you out. Now when are we going to get you back in the saddle?’
‘The saddle?’ I ask, sipping at my lemonade. ‘What kind of saddle?’
‘The man saddle.’
I almost splutter my lemonade over the bar. ‘I hope you’re not offering!’
‘Of course not!’ he says, frowning impishly and tapping over-dramatically at his giant gold wedding ring. ‘But it’s been quite a long time now, hasn’t it? Since that bastard? It’s a whole new year now and you need to get out there, girl. Get some action.’
‘Some action? Sounds horrendous.’ I laugh.
Charlie grins. ‘Romance, then. Romance. Come on, my friend. You must have one more Big Love in you.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Two was enough, I think. Mac, which didn’t end, as I’d hoped, with us riding off into some multi-hued sunset together – quite the opposite. And Christian – that bastard. I don’t think three’s a charm or even a possibility. I can’t see me falling in love ever again, or imagine any kind of man on this earth who would fall in love with me. Don’t I have ‘Damaged’ written on my forehead, like in that party game where you have to guess who you are? (‘Am I sub-human, half alive …?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do I want another relationship, ever …?’ ‘No.’) Aren’t there warning lights flashing all over me saying ‘Keep Clear’?
‘You never know, though,’ says Charlie. ‘You never know what’s around the corner.’
‘Round the corner from me is the post office and the newsagent’s that never has any milk,’ I say, ‘and that’s about it.’
Charlie chuckles. ‘OK, I take your point. But you could keep an open mind, couldn’t you? You’re still young, ish. Would you like another lemonade?’
When I get back to work there’s a note on my desk that Be
cky has called. I’m scared to call her back – I’ll end up telling her about Mac and she’ll be curious and want to know why I’m visiting him, and why he still means so much to me, and I don’t have an answer for her because I don’t really have one for myself. I flit around all afternoon, trying to settle to something – guilty that I’m not calling her. I’m always guilty when it comes to Becky. I continue to treat her badly, it seems, even though I now have a choice. I just seem to be stuck, unable to recover the Arden of old that Becky remembers.
I finally settle to googling Mac Bartley-Thomas on my PC to see if I can find out about any family and where they might be. Wikipedia is my first point of call. It talks about Mac, where he studied, the years he lectured at Warwick University. The word ‘maverick’ is mentioned, as is Sheffield University and UEA – the University of East Anglia – although there’s a question mark next to it and no years are detailed. There’s a bibliography listing a book he wrote, The Language of Celluloid. I scroll down. Here. Here it is. He has one son. His name is Lloyd Thomas. Lloyd. I roll the name around my mind and while it settles there I wonder where the ‘Bartley’ went to; that’s a bit odd. The name was edited three years ago. Was it by him? You can’t click on Lloyd Thomas and when I google him there are about a million of them. Googling his name and Mac’s together just brings up the Wikipedia page again. I am at a dead end already. The internet knows nothing about Mac’s son. Where is Lloyd, why has neighbour James never seen him and does he know his father is in hospital?
After work, and a jacket potato at home – done in the microwave – I walk to the hospital. It’s raining and my umbrella is little defence as the rain has decided to spitefully come down in a horizontal slant. I now have jeans on, and knee-high boots and an afghan coat with a huge shaggy fur collar. I should have worn my enormous cagoule thing but I want to look nice.
Fran is at the nurses’ station as I come into the ward. It’s no longer a tinsel-y sleigh.
You, Me and The Movies Page 8