by S. K. Perry
You said, ‘Don’t cry about things you can walk away from. There are people who can’t switch off their shit when you decide you’re fed up with feeling it.’
I knew it was about the boy on the bus and not about me. I could tell you didn’t want to talk so we just walked. When we got to the front door, you’d taken my hand and we kept on walking. We went down onto the Thames Path behind the flat and walked until we found a bench. I didn’t know what to say, so I told you that. I asked how you were feeling.
‘Tired,’ you said.
After a bit, we talked about other stuff: the film we’d just seen, what we were going to eat that night, and you tucked me in under your arm and held me there. We didn’t speak about it again until the next morning. I’d brought us coffee to have in bed, and you sipped yours and kissed me.
‘I didn’t really sleep. I kept thinking about that boy yesterday. No one has said that to me in a long time.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Not exactly. It just upset me. And it upset you too but, you know, we’re upset in different ways, from different places, and that’s all I was trying to say to you yesterday.’
‘Yeah. I was upset because I love you but someone was attacking you; of course it’s different.’
‘Right, and for something that’s always there, that I’m always thinking about. That’s why I get angry.’
‘I know. I just don’t know how to help you in those moments.’
‘Yeah. I guess we just have to keep talking about it. You’re white, Holly, and I’m black, and that’s not going anywhere. I love you and this stuff is always going to be a thing.’
‘We just have to keep talking about it.’
‘Yes.’
Walking home from Gabriella’s, I think about that conversation, and the ones that came after. Over the next few weeks, we started talking more about racism, about how it was for you to live in a racist world. We talked about our kids, the way people would see them, the things they might experience that I didn’t understand. We talked about what being white felt like for me, about how I’d never really had to think about that.
You always made me laugh so much, Sam, even when we talked about things that feel hard. We’d start talking about what we wanted the world to look like for our kids and suddenly we’d be laughing about something ridiculous, like you wanting to call one of them Horatio. And we’d still be talking about the hard stuff, but I’d be smiling at you, and you’d have your arms round me, and we’d be excited about the future, even though things aren’t always easy.
It hurts so much we never got to make those plans happen, Sam. I know that – whatever Gabriella and I said – when it comes to the ways we’re racialised, the teams we’re on can never be straightforward. But I miss you, Sam; I miss being your teammate so much.
42
It’s Friday evening and I feel reckless. I want to run or dance or do something with my body, but I don’t know how to use it right. I try sitting on my bed and reading, but my mind isn’t playing with my muscles and I need to be on my feet.
You understood this feeling. You’d say, ‘Let’s get a train somewhere, find a new city to love.’ We’d have packed pants and a toothbrush. I’d have made a picnic of cheese and beers and chicken wings and we’d have sat on a train and played cards and gone on an adventure.
Tonight, I think about shaving my hair off or making myself sick.
I get a text from Danny, asking if I want to go for a drink. I say yes and meet him at the St James. I put on a bra under my top, and some lipstick, and go out without a coat. I walk across the road and down the hill and Danny’s sitting in the pub. I feel relieved to see him. His smile sits calm in his eyes and he’s reassuringly broad.
We order hot rum and he asks if I know how to play chess. I do, so he gets the chessboard down from the games shelf. He’s not very good; he calls his knights horses and keeps forgetting that pawns take diagonally.
‘How can you be this bad? It was your idea to play. You’re worse at chess than you are at pub quizzes.’
‘Oh, and you’re so great, are you?’
I take his queen and put him in check.
‘I knew you were going to do that; it’s part of my long-term plan.’
‘Right, sure.’
‘No seriously, I’m lulling you into a false sense of security.’
‘Nah, mate. The long-term plan is you’re going down.’
I move my castle in line with his king.
‘Checkmate.’
‘What? How did you do that?’
‘I’m pretty stealthy.’
He laughs.
‘You’re the least stealthy person I know. You couldn’t tell a lie even if there was a pork pie at stake.’
I laugh at him. We talk about work and music, and drink some more. I have that wild feeling again, like I need to find someone to spend the night with, touching too hard and not feeling anything. But Danny wouldn’t be able to kiss me like I wasn’t there. I don’t know if he can tell that I’m thinking about kissing him and I’m worried it’s gone too far already, so I say I have to leave. He catches my hand as I stand up.
‘Holly, are you OK?’
I nod, ‘I’m just tired.’
The rain is really heavy and it’s only a couple of minutes up the road but by the time I get home I’m soaking. I can barely turn the key in the door my fingers are so slippery, and I’m drunk.
The red numbers on the clock by my bed say 12.42 and I sit down and imagine what would have happened if I’d brought Danny back. I wring my trousers out in the sink to dry them. Then I lie in bed and think about kissing him, his scratchy chin making my skin red in the morning. I think about how good it might have been to fall asleep in the hair that pokes out the top of his T-shirt, cramped into my single bed and curled round him. My head is itchy where my hair is wet between the pillow and my scalp, and I think about your hands on my body and the way we moved into each other. I put my back against the wall but it’s cold. It doesn’t feel at all like you did.
43
Ellie phones me one morning. Her viva is done; she’s finished her PhD. I call in sick to my cleaning jobs and take her out for a late breakfast. We go to the Mercure hotel and drink champagne that we can’t afford but neither of us cares. We spend the day mooching round North Laine and eat fish and chips on the pier for lunch. In the sea there are four people swimming together; they’re doing front crawl, arms turning in the water like blades at a wind farm.
We eat with our fingers and when Ellie can’t finish hers I eat it for her. The batter around the edge of the fish is a perfect amber and only oozes oil after its crisp is split by teeth. We smother our chips in ketchup and my fingers smell sweet all afternoon. We talk about her work and I don’t understand much of it but I’m proud of her. She’s been offered a position in the department and she’s going to stay on.
‘Have I got to call you Dr Ellie now?’ I ask.
‘Absolutely; it’s the only thing I’ll answer to.’
We walk back into town and when he finishes work, Sean comes and meets us at The Hop Poles for a few beers. I half expect Danny to come too but he doesn’t. Sean looks at me and says, ‘Look, Holly, I want to say something that may seem a bit weird.’
‘You are a bit weird.’
‘Well, your face is a bit weird.’
We laugh. Ellie rolls her eyes and kicks Sean.
‘What did you want to say?’ she asks. ‘Spit it out, boy.’
He looks at her and then at me. ‘I think you may know this already, Holly, but Danny really likes you.’
I don’t say anything. Ellie frowns at Sean, like she doesn’t think he should have said it. She turns to me apologetically.
‘Look, Sam died nine months ago and I know you think you’re a mess. For what it’s worth you seem like a normal level of mess to me but I know it’s confusing so please just be careful. Mr DeVito is a nice boy and we all love you both a lot.’
I
look at her. ‘We don’t have to talk about it,’ she continues. ‘Sean shouldn’t have brought it up. But if you want to…’
I nod and we get another drink, and afterwards I walk home, trying to work out how all of the things I’m feeling sit together. It’s hard, so I start to run, and when I get home I’m tired enough and drunk enough to sleep.
44
I’ve written a new song about you. It’s about the holiday we had in Rome: the night we sat up together in a little bar drinking coffee and smoking. We walked to the Spanish Steps, which is what people who are in love are supposed to do. I bought a rose from a street seller and gave it to you and you laughed at me and said they were meant to be for the women. I tucked it behind your ear and kissed your neck and your ear lobe and your ear. You just held me and breathed deeply and then we found the cafe round the corner where we sat and watched the sun come up and looked at each other and felt like we could stay there forever. You wrote me dirty messages on a napkin and I stroked your thigh under the table.
I don’t know how to put the song to music; I haven’t been able to find a melody that’s beautiful and sad enough yet.
45
I’m hosting the March book club and because I only rent a small room, I borrow Frank’s kitchen and hold it there. I make homemade lamb burgers with mint and coriander, a spicy yellow-tomato relish and a crumbling raspberry-and-white-chocolate pavlova. I’ve chosen Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh and am nervous about whether the others will like it. I spend ages deciding what to wear and stand under the shower worrying while the food cooks.
After my shower I sit on the toilet, wrapped in my towel and dripping on the burnt-red tiles of Frank’s bathroom, flicking through a book of poetry from the shelf above the loo. Frank has a record on downstairs. It’s Vladimir Ashkenazy playing Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp Minor and my fingers move slightly as they feel the key patterns flex through the air.
Noel arrives just as I come downstairs, and we stand in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil as the others duck out of the rain and through the front door. Jackie’s glasses steam up and everyone piles their wet coats over the radiator in the hall. The rain is falling in sheets like cling film and they’re all drenched. Cups of tea are poured and plates of food dished out, and we all squeeze in around the table in Frank’s kitchen. Gabriella smiles at me as I hand her a burger. I watch as she tries it and she nods her approval as she dips a forkful into the relish.
We argue over the book. Ellie says that it’s over-written, that she didn’t care about any of the characters and that it’s cynical but without anywhere to aim its cynicism. Danny says it’s empty on purpose and that’s the point; you’re meant to laugh at it, and Gabriella joins in on his side as I get up to put the kettle on. Danny is sat diagonally opposite me at the table and I feel more aware of my face than normal but otherwise nothing seems different. When he speaks I avoid eye contact and occasionally I look at the ceiling, which is painted white and has little cracks in the corners. I wait for the kettle to boil. Noel says he doesn’t think it’s empty and that the holes in the characters are the most important bits. He says he thinks it trivialises despair, which is problematic, and I bring the tea back to the table and Ellie says she found it unpleasantly artificial and if that was deliberate then it worked but she wasn’t sure she’d liked it. I say I think the book is funny. Gabriella agrees and says she thinks that’s the point Danny’s making. I put the back of my fingers to my cheeks to cool down my face, and try to relax my shoulders by puffing a little bit of air out and eating a mouthful of pavlova to give my mouth something to do.
I go up to the roof to smoke with Ellie after everyone has finished eating. It’s a clear night with a bit of a wind and from within the hood of my coat I’m getting wafts of Frank’s shampoo in my hair. It smells of pears and makes me feel clean. I draw on my cigarette and listen to a seagull in the distance.
‘That piano music Frank was playing when we got here; what was it, poppet?’ Ellie asks.
‘Chopin.’
‘I thought it might be. Noel told me once that Frank plays Chopin when he’s stuck on something. I didn’t know what he meant so I asked Frank about it and he told me he always listens to it if he’s working on a very tricky knitting pattern. I don’t know; it’s not like Frank to be facetious so maybe he meant it but I always felt like there was more to it. He seems alright to me though?’
‘Yeah, I think so. He loves these nights.’
I yawn and she pokes her finger into the hole it makes in my mouth, jerking it back before I close it again. I laugh.
‘You weirdo.’
‘I remember when I first met Frank,’ she says. ‘I sat down opposite him in Jackie’s cafe and he looked up, stared at me and said, ‘You look ill. Is someone looking after you?’ I was really thrown by it; this old man I didn’t know just going there.’
‘He’s got a way about him, hasn’t he?’
‘I didn’t know what the fuck to say but then he showed me this article he was reading in National Geographic about manatees –’
‘Manatees?’
‘Yeah; they’re sea cows: massive mammals that live in rivers. We must have talked for an hour or so, bits about manatees and bits about me or him, and then he lent me a book – I can’t even remember what it was – and he told me about this book club, told me to come. I wasn’t sure about it, but I went – obviously – and, I don’t know, it’s really helped.’
‘Frank seems to have a knack of finding people who need him, doesn’t he?’
She stubs out her cigarette butt in the ashtray Frank keeps on the roof and steps away from me, spinning around with her arms held up like a ballet dancer.
‘We all need each other, darling,’ she says. ‘It’s a crazy vicious world and each other’s all we’ve got. You done?’
I squash the end of my cigarette and nod.
‘I want to go dancing. What do you reckon, after this?’
She wiggles her eyebrows at me.
‘Let’s do it! We haven’t been out in ages. I’ll call the others and get them to meet us down the front.’
I could have gone by myself, danced until someone caught me, been alone with someone else for a while. I don’t want to do that tonight.
46
Sometimes you clog my daytimes. Sometimes you are the only way I can breathe. Sometimes I think it might be getting better, but night always rolls round again, or daytime, or night again.
47
We dance until the club closes and it’s just us and a bunch of students. We’re crazy to be doing this on a Wednesday night but by the time we leave we’re drunk enough we can’t feel the cold.
The wetness of the sky is like a flannel. It’s raining in that way that makes the air damp as you walk through it. It falls in sheets – thin and constant – mixing into the sea without a splash. It’s always fucking raining here, Sam; you’d go mad from it.
By the shore, Ellie and Sean flag down a taxi and split from us, heading home. The rest of us are still buzzing from the alcohol and the dancing. We’re hungry, so we decide to get toasties from the little kiosk on the prom. Duane’s is ham and tomato. I warn him toasted tomato gets really hot and he says the ham will cool it down. I find that convincing and order the same, but it doesn’t work and I burn my mouth. He laughs at me as I poke my tongue out and try to cool it down with the rain.
We duck down onto the beach. It’s slippery. We sit on the stones, coats underneath our bums to stop our trousers from getting wet. We sit looking at the moon. The sandwiches are thick and sweaty. Where the bread has been toasted the crusts crunch together. It leaves my fingers smelling of oil. Someone says something about work in the morning.
‘We’re too old for this.’
Duane leans over and bites off a chunk of Mira’s sandwich, jumps up and pulls her to her feet. ‘You’re right. Come on; let’s get going. I feel like we won’t be thanking you and Ellie for this in the morning.’
I laugh.
They leave. I look at Danny and realise how cold I’m getting. We stand up. The sea doesn’t look wet in the darkness and I want to touch it. Sometimes it feels like we’ve been flipped around: me and the water and the sky. The sea could be space and the sky could be the silky cover of a planet I’d like to be on. I’d stroke its navy-blue breathing. I could put a star in my mouth and set myself on fire from the inside. Je voudrais te regarder respirer pendant que tu dors, te voir inspirer le ciel.
All I can see is the sea, close up, full of the dark. I turn and face Danny.
‘Do you want me to walk you home?’ he asks.
‘I think I can probably manage on my own,’ I say, and I laugh again.
‘That’s not exactly what I meant though.’
I look at him in the rain. He’s wearing a dark-green anorak and his hair is stuck to his forehead, water dripping down his nose. I take a step forward and put my hands on his hips. He puts one of his hands on my waist and the other one under my chin and I’m very aware of my breathing. He kisses me. It’s so tentative it makes me want to cry. It’s like he doesn’t want to hurt me and that’s what makes it hurt. I’m real to him and he’s funny and kind and I put my arms right round him and let him wrap me up. I don’t think he knows he’s holding me together, that if he let go I’d fall apart.
We stop kissing and then we look at each other for a bit and I don’t know what to do so I say, ‘Goodnight, Danny.’
I untangle myself from him and turn to go home. I don’t look back at him but I want to. I’m so sorry, Sam. I start to run, and as I reach the path I nearly slip.
Spring
I’m a bag of bones
wrapped up in skin. Hold me; let
me be like water.
1
Brighton is tired and damp, like it’s been left screwed up in a washing machine, unable to dry because of the chill.