by Jonathan Lee
‘You’ll need this temporary pass,’ he says. ‘Maybe I can pick it up from you Monday. I mean, it’s nuts how many we lose.’
Even now, panicked heart pumping, she has that way of getting what she wants. In a slightly flirty show of gratitude she squeezes his forearm, then walks through the entrance and down the ramp towards the gym. Call Barbara, that’s what she’ll do. Her head should not hurt this much, the airy ache becoming a sharper sort of pain. The mud on her tights, on her thighs, looks like dried blood.
Blood on her thighs, blood on her thighs, blood on her thighs. Reminds her of lying on plasticky sheets in the treatment centre, seven weeks pregnant, legs spread, hearing that awful sucking sound. She didn’t look at the bedpan then, couldn’t believe they’d use a bedpan and didn’t dare look, but the following week she had to return, transpired they hadn’t properly emptied the womb, had to lie there and pass what they called ‘the retained products of conception’ (all this talk of eggs and products and waste, like the whole place was a sick supermarket), and on that occasion she made the error of glancing down at it, the him or the her, the sinewy red unforgettable mess. Unmentionable, that mess. The words describing it existed only in her own head. And, months after the abortion was complete, her relationship with Peter – if you could call it a relationship, those years of secret meetings, prudent break-ups, aborted confessions and heady pitiful collapses back into adultery – that ended with blood too, didn’t it? She’d practised a unique, sensitive speech so many times but at the key moment her rehearsed words fled and she used the same television-drama dialogue as everyone else: ‘I’m sorry’, ‘I can’t do this any more’, ‘It’s over’. She said these things to Peter. He was silent. She said them to him again.
He wanted one last go. That’s what he said, one last go, and at first she thought he meant the relationship generally, that after all this time spent clinging and hating herself for clinging the roles had been reversed. She sat on his sofa, on Christine’s sofa, and thought about saying yes. There was a twitch in his smile that could have been pain. A boyishness to his words.
She thought about saying yes, but she said no. And he said Come on. And she said No.
‘Wrong time of the month,’ she explained, remembering it was true, wanting to reinforce her refusal with a physical detail, beginning to feel afraid of his level expression.
As he leant over her and unzipped himself there was this great stray voltage in his eyes. Whisky-glazed. Risky.
He tickled the nape of her neck and pulled her head – too hard – into his waist. His other hand found a space between the buttons of her shirt. Fingers cold. Prick warm.
‘Fuck off, Peter, I said no.’
His thumb and forefinger pinched her cheek with a pressure poised between affection and aggression, and the imposition of this gesture, weirdly familial and old-fashioned, startled her so much that she wasn’t aware of being pushed backwards, missed this moment entirely and realised she was lying flat, wriggling under his weight. He did not show her his eyes. His eyes were buried in cushions and his shoulder was in her mouth and she was biting hard but the pain seemed to reach him as pleasure. He gave her no moment of anticipation or connection. No attempt to get her wet the way he had the first time, kissing her nipples in Essaouira, everyone waiting outside. Peter gave her no secret moment like this, just pulled the tampon out and as she delivered the muffled words ‘Peter listen’ his thrust caused a dull blunt pain that surged from her pelvis to her jaw. That’s the moment she stopped biting him, became silent and submissive, his moans merging with the gassy groan of buses stopping on the Holloway Road. Then or shortly after.
And pulling his jeans back on, throwing her a tea towel for the blood, he said, ‘Will you stay for another drink?’
There’s a phone at the bottom of the goods-bay ramp. It is tricky to remember Barbara’s extension so she dials reception, gets put through that way, listens to a speech about how Alfredo needs to go, and explains exactly what it is she wants from this vigilant senior citizen of whom she’s oddly fond. Only then, after that, does she cry, dabbing the sides of her eyes with the burnt back of her hand, cigarette wound stinging from the salt.
Barbara
I’VE ALREADY heard what I’m getting. My gift presentation – that fruit is going to waste – isn’t until Monday. But Liz was tasked with buying it, the gift, so I already know what it is. Do you want to know? Wait for it. Wait till you hear this. Just wait.
Bath oils!
Did you not hear me? I said bath oils! Forty years. Forty years at the firm. And they give me bath oils. Is it bad? Is it bad? Of course it’s bad! It’s about as bad as that shirt you’re wearing. Worse, even, if you take an objective whatschacall, perspective.
Hmm?
Well, that might be true. But do we mean hate, when we say hate?
I’ve always loathed this place. Four decades of tedium and paper cuts. Meeting requests. Lever-arch files. Spines. Labels. Sandwich-fetching. Mistake-covering. Fee-earners and their mistakes! Lemme tell you, mistakes are their vocation. You cover for them, they’re all grateful, and the next day they’ve forgotten. They don’t know the meaning of thank you. Like Mr Ignorant. He never knew the meaning of thank you. A musician, my husband, when he wasn’t in uniform. Did I tell you that? A musician of sorts, anyway. Did the rounds for a while. Banjo. Loved it. Five string. Like the minstrels had, Joe Sweeney and the like. His whole life was a tune played on those five strings. Over-twangy. Improvised. I’ll tell you this, if you’re thinking of getting involved with a creative type let me tell you this, you can have this for free, it’s the best advice I never had, it’s been a rule of my adult life ever since he died, men throw themselves at me but I follow this rule: if you’re thinking of marrying a person who’s into the arts – poems, trampoline, banjo, whatever – you must – believe me – I know what I’m talking about – you must not do it.
Well then. Good for you.
A question? Of course. Ask away. Ask anything.
Now all credit to you for asking, but there’s that word again. Feelings. I’m going to be clear. I’m up here with you because it beats being down there working for James O’Brien, photocopying invites to his son’s birthday party. I was told as Joy’s PA I’m entitled to come and speak with you. But I am not comfortable exposing my feelings to a man I barely know, and I’m tired of you focusing on Friday. Joy Stephens is a minor character in my life. You might think everything I tell you can, through some clever note-editing or flick of perspective, be connected to what happened last Friday, but it can’t. There have been plenty of interesting unrelated developments before and since then. And I don’t just mean on the Alfredo front – though I’m going to make him sorry he ever came to this office, that much is definite – but all sorts of areas.
Well hold on. One thing at a time. Let’s deal with Friday first. There are still plenty of questions about that day. Questions like this: why did she look all beaten up that afternoon when – as you point out – she hadn’t even had her fall yet, when it was a good couple of hours before her fall? I could barely believe it, when I got down to the basement and saw the state her clothes were in –
There he goes again! The human alarm clock! Studied it at your fancy university, did you, the art of interruption?
Good. About time.
Friday. I was thinking maybe I’d phone Joy. This Project Poultry thing was getting tricky and nobody was around. The client was calling and the trainee had left me some document he said was crucial. I’m forever left holding the fort. I’m a modern-day Penelope. And then, as if I’ve got psychic powers – which by the way Jackie’s always said I have, partly on account of me predicting the bullet that hit Mr Ignorant’s brain, no easy target – she phones me. And it sounds like she’s in a car wash somewhere. This is around lunchtime, and technically I’m on my break. I never have a break, which is why I want to see New York so badly. Reli
ving the old times there, seeing lost family, it would restore me, see me through another few years. So Joy’s speaking to me from this hot tub with all this splashing and trickling all around and, if I’m honest, the things she says, they’re unhelpful. Tells me to speak to the Halfwit Peter Carlisle, that he can sort out my poultry issue. But I know Peter Carlisle’s off somewhere with his trainee. And, furthermore, I know that Peter Carlisle’s a halfwit. So, once she’s put the phone down – is that the way to treat your PA of eight years? – I have a think and end up phoning her back. She puts me on speakerphone, so I can hear every soap sud on the bonnet, and then brushes me off all unhelpful again. Almost – if I’m honest – rude. She was, at times, a very rude person. And then an hour or two passed and I was thinking about phoning her again and – yes – what happened next? – guess what happened next.
Exactly. Those ears aren’t just ornamental, eh?
The phone in my cubicle goes and it comes up as Basement-ex-two-six-six-something and I pick it up. Joy. It’s Joy. She can barely keep her voice smooth. Her words are obscure and full of gaps – more than words generally are, I mean – and she begs, begs me, to grab the dry-cleaning from her office, plus one of her pairs of fancy heels, and come downstairs to meet her. She even gets the dry-cleaner to do her shirts. People are so wasteful. It’s like when the young girls in my section are doing the tea run and use a separate bag for every mug. Eight separate tea bags! You could keep Africa awake with that!
So I do as she asks, obviously. Lemme tell you, I’m a good PA. If one of my fee-earners needs help, I help. And when I finally get down to the basement on my stick and my hip, her appearance gives me a real shock. Her shirt’s dirty and wet. It’s see-through to an indecent degree. The flesh beneath looks grazed. But it’s not the physical side that tells me something really serious has happened. No. It’s the breathing. I’m a great believer in breathing as a way to get by. If you want to relax you’ve got to breathe properly. In through the nose – sinuses permitting – and out through the mouth. Oxygen calms you. I tell her this. Breathe, Joy. Breathe. Calm down. Some old man from the canteen walks by and tries to help us. Men are the worst at crises, aren’t they? I haven’t known many intimately, but I’ve heard bad things. Especially old men. I’m not a fan of old people. Problem with the old is this: they have every door open to them, yet all they feel is the draught. So Joy’s breathing is gradually calming down and I’m holding the dry-cleaned suit, shirt and shoes. And then I see that behind one of her ears there’s this ugly cut. Small but deep, a purply bruise around it.
Obviously I tell her she should see a doctor. It seems like she’s knocked her head. She’s all dazed. Her speech is a bit…watery. But she won’t let me call a doctor. The most I can do is get her to the women’s changing rooms.
I get her to the women’s changing rooms. Luckily there’s nobody there. I tell her, Give me your clothes. And just like a little girl she obeys. She takes her clothes off. And them, I say. And she slips her knickers off too. Women these days with their fancy nether hair. It’s none of my concern. And for some reason she says, Don’t look at my shoulders. Completely naked and she’s thinking of the shoulders. And she’s shivering like it’s cold, and I take one of the spare towels on the side, all warm from being in the towel room, and I wrap her in it, surprised how small she is. I walk her over to the showers and get the temperature right, then rest for a few minutes on the bench, waiting for her wash to finish. The whole thing reminds me of when my daughter was little. She travels a lot but she phones sometimes. And while I’m getting her dressed and putting some of my own make-up on her – my best stuff – to cover up her bruise and so on, she says something, and I have to ask her to say it again. And she says, voice a bit better now, looking clean and almost composed, she says, Barbara, I think I killed someone. And I say, Joy, lemme get this straight, what are you saying here? And she says, He wouldn’t stop talking, and my BlackBerry flashing, always flashing, so I threw it at the perspex screen, I think, to make him stop.
Joy, I say, come on, what are you saying?
And she says, He turned and swerved and hit the bus.
She couldn’t explain any more than that. Couldn’t explain, for example, about the burn on her hand. Now I’m no expert but that looked like a cigarette burn. It had the shape of a burn Mr Ignorant left on the sofa after a Mets game, back when me and him lived two blocks down from my cousin Jackie in New York, cousin Jackie who I’d give anything to visit but can’t. And how are you going to get one of those in a car accident?
Anyway, she was dressed. We had hair and make-up covering the cut behind the ear and she was seeming more calm. So I leant in close. I said to her, very quietly, I said, Joy, listen, you need to speak to the police. One thing you’ve got to really do is speak to the police. And before you do that I think it would be an idea, don’t you, if we went to your office quickly, you owe me this, to resolve what we do on Project Poultry.
Hmm?
Well, don’t misunderstand me, she took some persuading. Sensitivity’s the key. I tell her, I’m not getting left with this dodgy document while you’re serving time. And although she agreed to come back upstairs with me, I’m sad to say that when we got in the lift, she switched. She became old cold corporate Joy again. Laughing and joking all insincere with one of the lechy partners. Ignoring me completely. I’ve just washed and dressed her like my own child and she ignores me.
Did it hurt, her coldness? Of course it hurt. I would be justified, would I not, in hating her. Sometimes I hated her more than anyone in the world. Not that I don’t appreciate she’s been through things.
No, I don’t mean the nephew! Who told you about the nephew? That’s none of your concern. You have no business delving into people’s private pains.
We go upstairs, she presumably deals with the document direct, I leave her to it, it’s no longer my concern, and the next time I see her she’s up on that viewing platform thing starting to speak. I’m not really listening. I’m nudging Debs and saying, See those police over there, I know what that’s about, it’s all going to get messy after this. Because there were two police officers in the crowd at her speech, did you know that? And then I add – casual – that we need to talk about Alfredo too, that I’ve got some information she’ll want to see. Joy’s up there speaking and I’m thinking to myself, Do I need more evidence before I dish the dirt on Alfredo? Is it too risky to do it now? And then, well, we see this thing happen, this thing with Joy, to remind me, to remind us all, that life is one big gamble, and the odds – the odds! – they’re pretty awful at the end of the day.
First to move, we were. It felt that way, anyhow, that the four of us were the first to move towards her when she hit the ground. Me, the Asian, Dennis, the Halfwit. Which is maybe why we tend to visit her more regularly than the others.
I decided to take less risks with the Alfredo thing. I started to compile my whatschacall, dossier, so I couldn’t be accused of prejudice, or having improper motives. And now I’ve got all I need. I present to you Exhibits B and C.
Have you ever seen such an improper use of firm whatschacall, resources?
There’s more where those came from, much more. And on Monday, right after they give me the insulting box of bath oils, right after I make my rehearsed quip about how a bath is just what I need after forty years at this place, a long bath with a brick and no snorkel, right after that I’m taking Debs to one side, and I’m showing her the evidence. I’ll give it a week, maybe less, before Alfredo’s sent packing.
We are all born idle. Some remain so. That’s the point.
4.02 p.m.
SHE LOVES the affection Barbara gives her, is desperate and grateful for it. The old woman waits with a towel as Joy showers, the crashing of the water half disguising her remaining sobs and sniffs. She despises the sound of her own grief. Reminds her too much of the noises accompanying her mother’s frequently contorted face, its at
hletic upset. Lydia Stephens cried so much during Joy’s early teens that Dad expressed concern she’d bleed out, go crusty like an old sponge wrung free of all moisture. To emphasise his point he would, during his wife’s more dramatic fits of self-pity, bring glasses of water to her bedside, a tactic that was deemed sarcastic and thus made the wailing worse. Joy’s mum wanted to be an actress, but even family contacts on Broadway told her she was ill-suited to the profession. Surprising, really, because she seemed to have all the requisite mood swings and insecurities. Broadway remained her dream and she’d often say, as Barbara sometimes does, that leaving America was a mistake, would say it so often and with such ugly grief-soaked snot in her voice that when she did finally abandon the Hampstead-based family, in the middle of Joy’s GCSEs, the thing that shocked most was not the loss but the pleasant aftermath of silence that came with it. The kind of quiet calm that hangs in the steam now, after the squeak of the shower tap turning. Joy would cook nutritious food, her father would read the paper, Annie would flick through university photos – all in serene silence. Joy got eleven A grades. A*s were introduced a couple of years later. Irritating, really, the flightiness of Perfection; makes you feel like the dinner guest, corner-seated, who must forever lean to hear the out-of-earshot jokes. Mostly they’re not even funny.
Would moving to New York be the answer, leaving Dennis and her job? On some nights, trying to find a way into sleep, nostalgia stirred by darkness, she thinks it could be, even wonders about it now as Barbara cloaks her in the beautifully warm towel. She has a yearning to return to something, some prior swaddled state. Her life began there, maybe it could begin there again. Lying beside Dennis she has weighed up so many possibilities – new careers, new lovers, new continents – so many ways of hurling herself into the unknown and proving she exists, and New York, the prospect of tracking her mother down, asking her questions, giving her a hug or a punch in the face, rediscovering an unexhausted part of herself, used to loom large in these imagined escapes. But visiting friends of Dennis in Brooklyn Heights a few years ago, all four of them drinking chilled Coors and studying lower Manhattan from the terrace, the city seemed changed, suddenly too fragile to house her rehabilitation. Back in 2001 Bennie and Jen had emailed Dennis footage from this vantage point of theirs, a mid-September morning through which oily smoke rolled south from the collapsed towers, obscuring Liberty Island. Now the air was clean once more and the skyline had shaken itself out, settled into its new spaces; yet with this revision came a vulnerability that was somehow sadder than the raging mess it replaced. The emptiness was stifling. Surrounding skyscrapers stood unmoved – stony, glassy, mute.