Genie and Paul

by Natasha Soobramanien

  What sort of music is this? Genie asked, looking doubtfully at the cover of the tape. Seggae? What’s that?

  A cross between reggae and sega – the Mauritian music at Daniel’s wedding.

  Genie would only ever play the tape a couple of times. The rhythms were unfamiliar and she couldn’t understand the lyrics. Furthermore, to hear this band she’d never heard of, singing in a language she’d heard only with family, disturbed her. And then the tape got absorbed into Paul’s collection, which he took with him when he moved in with Eloise two years later, and Genie never saw it again.

  As for the seeds, they never took root.

  (vi) Bel Gazou

  Eloise’s mother answered the door in her dressing-gown, its sleeves like the limp wings of some tropical butterfly. She did not seem to recognise Genie, who announced herself as Eloise’s friend from school. Eloise’s mother looked blank, and then without a change in expression said, Oh, Paul’s sister. She might have said more but she was distracted by the cat, a blue Persian with knotted fur, that was stalking past her, towards the open door. Bel Gazou! she scolded, bending to scoop it up, one hand pulling at the gap in her gown, briefly exposing the dark vein which ran across the top of her breasts. Her nails were painted a dull glittery green. You know you are not allowed outside, she murmured into the cat’s head. It mewed in complaint and struggled free. Mrs Hayne nudged the cat inside with her bare foot and turned away into the house. Genie took this as an invitation to follow her.

  The drawing room had been redecorated since Genie had last seen it. The walls were now dark and glossy, like holly leaves. Eloise’s mother sat down and gestured for Genie to do the same. Genie complimented Bel Gazou on having aged so well. She was told in almost admonishing tones that this was in fact Bel Gazou the second, and when Genie asked if Bel Gazou was in that case the daughter of Bel Gazou the first she was told no, this Bel Gazou had been bought from a breeder, Bel Gazou the first being unable to have kittens.

  The vet said she was not one of nature’s mothers.

  Ah, yes, said Genie, remembering the time she had come to stay with Eloise one summer, when Mrs Hayne was away.

  I am not really dressed for visitors.

  I won’t keep you.

  Genie explained that she had rung Eloise several times but received no response. She had left messages at this number too. Eloise’s mother blamed the cleaner, a Polish girl who was always deleting messages then not passing them on, apparently. But in any case Eloise was no longer living here. She was in East London now, living in one of her father’s properties. She was working for him too. Eloise’s mother gave a quick cat-like yawn and asked if she might speak plainly.

  If she’s not answering I can only assume she doesn’t want to speak to you. I wouldn’t take that personally: you know how messy things got with Paul, how ill she got, and so on. It’s been over a year now. I’m sure she just wants to put all that behind her. And you must remind her so much of him and their time together.

  Eloise’s mother still dyed her hair that same shade of red, Genie noted, as she followed her to the front door. The same shade Eloise dyed hers. This had always made Genie feel uneasy. As though Eloise’s mother was overstating her claim to be just that. It had made Genie uneasy long before she’d even known Eloise was adopted.

  Genie had never been to Canary Wharf before. The DLR turned on a section of elevated track and a crop of buildings surged up, all of the same green-grey glass. They looked like the crystalline stalagmites in Superman’s secret cave. The company’s offices were high up in one of the stalagmites. Genie felt increasingly claustrophobic the closer she got: walking first into the atrium, then up into the lift suite where she was shown into the lift itself, then through a maze of windowless corridors – the whole place artificially lit and climate-controlled – until she was so far removed from the outside world, she could have been underground. But instead, here she was hundreds of feet up in the air. It all looked so – so – professional. Just like Eloise herself, she thought, peering through the internal window of her office, struck by how much she’d changed – the hair, the clothes, the poise. An act of camouflage. What had happened to the half-feral thing she’d been when she was with Paul?

  As Genie was shown in, Eloise froze, then smiled ruefully, stretching out across the desk in a kind of horizontal yawn, a gesture of the old Eloise, at odds with the suit and the sleekness.

  Genie, angered by this nonchalance, felt unable to look at her and moved to the window. She could almost see clouds below as she looked out, and now Eloise was beside her, telling her that the glass was bomb-proof and that the windows couldn’t be opened. She tapped the steel window-frames. Then Genie noticed the fingernails, long and red and glossy. She was almost fooled. But the nails were fake, she noticed. Perhaps, underneath, Eloise’s nails were still bitten.

  You want to know about Paul, she said.

  Yes, said Genie. Tell me.

  (vii) Eloise’s Story

  I saw him about a week ago. He was in a bad way. Maybe that’s how he always was. Maybe I was always in such a bad way myself, I never saw it. So let’s say he was fine. As fine as he ever was. He wanted money. I went to see him at his hotel and gave it to him. I don’t know what he wanted it for. I had a few ideas. But I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know about him. How he’d been. He told me anyway. He told me about you. What he’d done to you. He was shaking and crying when he told me. I gave him the money on condition he didn’t contact me again. Look at me. I have a new life now. Do you know why I broke it off, in the end? Why, until last week, I’d not seen him in over a year? Let me tell you. We were living back near Old Street, just like in the early days. We never saw you. That was only a few months after Paul had found out about Sol. He wasn’t speaking to either of you. It was a strange building, right on City Road but somehow invisible from the street. You walked through an iron door into a narrow overgrown garden and this tall, sooted, spindly building. I don’t know what it was originally built for. A grain warehouse or something. There were six floors the size of hangars, several huge rooms on each. Paul and I had a floor to ourselves. Our room overlooked the road but you couldn’t hear a thing. It did my head in. Everything about it did my head in. That space. I felt like I was drowning in it. A guy on the floor above us had two pitbulls that would race each other up and down the corridor and around the empty rooms. This constant thundering and thumping. They’re densely built dogs. They don’t corner easily. And their nails! Shredding my nerves. I spent a lot of time in that room alone. A huge room with bare floorboards and everything we owned dumped in one corner like stuff that someone else had left behind. And me, on our mattress, in the other. Paul was out a lot, dealing or partying or both. I just sat indoors on my own, listening to those fucking dogs, getting iller and iller. It takes energy – courage – to live, and I had none. So I just lay there, really. How did it come to that? This past year I’ve been wondering. I was a kid when I met your brother. We were so free! Constantly on the move. Paul said something once. Wondering what it did to your mind, your sense of imagination to only ever live in the same type of space. Even a big wedding cake house like yours, he said, if it’s all you’ll ever know. It’s gotta do something to your sense of scale. Perspective. But we lived in warehouses, in big old Victorian pubs, council flats, in semis, disused factories… even a boat. It worked the other way for us. We got lost in all that space. And left something behind every time we moved. People, sometimes. Like Sol. By the time we got to City Road, there was very little left and I couldn’t think about changing things. And then something happened… Sometimes Paul brought people back. People I didn’t like. I didn’t like them for all kinds of reasons and you can guess what they were. But this one guy, Digs, he scared me. And, at the time, I was so listless that I really didn’t scare easily. He had these steeply sloped shoulders. They were so sloped his neck practically ran straight into his chest. Paul said he looked like an over-sharpened pencil. There was somethi
ng about his eyes, too. They were like how an ice lolly goes when you’ve sucked all the colour out of it. They’d been out all night. They came into the room around midday. I was sitting there reading a magazine. Paul’s all excited, tells me he’s going to Digs’s place, Digs wants to show him something and did I want to come too? He didn’t live far, just in a block in Hoxton. I didn’t want to go. But I got this funny vibe. I suddenly felt I needed to be there, that my being there would keep Paul safe. A lot of Paul’s mates were proper East End. People who’d lived in Hoxton and Shoreditch all their lives, like their parents and grandparents. I used to think he just liked villains – that’s what a lot of them were – and I could see why because a lot of them were clever in a raw sort of way, like Paul. But now I’m not so sure. I think it was more the strong sense they had of themselves. Who they were. They all lived in the same place they’d been born in, grew up in the same place where their parents and grandparents had grown up. These guys knew where they were from. Who they were. That really appealed to Paul. But when it came down to it, Paul was not one of them. And there was something a bit… loose about Digs. I was loose enough myself to know it when I saw it. So I went with them. Digs takes us to his flat, one in a council block round the back of Hoxton Market. As soon as I walked into that place, I feared for my life. The front room of this tiny council flat crammed with – well, it looked like a herd – of occasional tables, all of them crowded with fancy little figurines: sad clowns, dimpled shepherdesses, pigs in fancy-dress. Totally Pound Shop. Impressive how Digs manoeuvred his way around all that tat without breaking anything, telling us to watch this or that as we made our way to the sofa. The place looked so normal and the two of them so spannered, teeth grinding, these horrible grins when they thought they were smiling – the place reeking of Glade and psychosis. Then Digs says, Amazing, isn’t it? And I notice the fish tank. It’s on the wall-unit. This huge tank. And in it, one solitary, splendid turquoise fish, like no fish I’ve ever seen before. Its tail is like an ostrich-feather fan. Almost burlesque. Shimmery blue like one of those huge Brazilian butterflies. So I’m looking at this fish and I think, There’s something wrong with it. I couldn’t work out what. Then I realised. It was absolutely still. Not patrolling its tank like fish usually do, but just hanging there, suspended in the water, like it was waiting for something to happen. And it was. Something was about to happen. Digs asks us what we think of his fish. Goes up to the tank and makes a kissy face. It’s a Siamese Fighting Fish, he says. Then he points to a smaller tank on the shelf above. There’s a smaller fish in it. Reddish pink and mottled. It has some kind of skin condition. Its tail and fins look kind of ragged, and dragging, like a kid dressed in grown-ups’ clothes. Digs tells us he’s got to keep them separate; two males in a tank will fight until there’s only one’s left. Like nick. He can’t even let them see each other. You want to see what happens when you hold a mirror up to ’em. Then he turns to Paul and asks which one he fancies. For the fight. My heart sinks but Paul looks blank. So Digs spells it out. He’s gonna make them fight. And he wants Paul to bet on one. Double or quits, he says. If Paul wins, he’ll wipe his slate clean. If not, he’ll double it. OK, Paul says, I’ll take the blue one. Digs says he fancies that one too, so they’re gonna have to toss for it. And it’s Digs who does the toss, Paul smiling to himself, because he can see by now he’s walked straight into this one. Paul loses the toss. He gets the red one. He just shrugs. What else can he do? Looks like a survivor, he says. A fighter. You take the pretty one, then. So Digs takes out a small net and dips it into the smaller tank and tips the red fish into the tank with the blue fish. The second it takes for Paul’s fish to right himself is the second it takes for Digs’s fish to go at him with all the force he’s gathered in his hours and hours of stillness. I see the lunge and I close my eyes and when I open them again a split second later all I can see is flashes of turquoise, flakes of mottled red and ribbons of blood unfurling like fag smoke in the water. A second ago I couldn’t look and now I can’t look away. I can’t look away until the blue fish has ravaged that red fish and there’s no more movement in the tank, just a flurry of ripped up scales, the whole thing looking like one of those snowglobes you shake up, except the water’s pink like dentists’ mouth-rinse. That’s when Digs dips his net into the bowl, almost gently, careful to avoid his fish, which is just like it had been before the fight – absolutely still. Digs tips the dead fish onto the carpet. Nudges the thing with his foot. Says to Paul, Flush that… My dad always said there’d be a job for me, a flat for me, if I split up with Paul. I could change my life. Up until that moment I could barely consider it. Just thinking about it made me feel exhausted. Sometimes it’s easier to go along with the life you find yourself in than to think about changing it. But that morning something kicked in. I had to get out. The way Paul was going, something bad was going to happen. And we had to pay off Digs. In the end I went crawling to my dad. He told me he’d give me the money if I got shot of Paul. That he’d find me somewhere calm to sort my head out. I was relieved. Like he’d made the decision for me. After that I had to stop caring. That’s what I told Paul when he came to visit just after we split. That I’d stopped caring. To his credit, he understood. He said he was relieved. That I was better off without him. He ruffled my hair, kissed me on the forehead, and wished me happiness.

  Then I went to see him last week, when he called. It fucked me up a bit, Genie. I hope I never see him again.

  (viii) 1989–90

  It was at boarding school that Genie and Eloise first met. But they might never have become friends at all, if Genie had not taken to sleepwalking. One night, soon after arriving, she was found wandering the wood-panelled corridors where the retired nuns lived, a small ghost in pyjamas. These nuns had not retired from being nuns, but from contact with the school and its pupils. In doing so, Genie felt that they had lost some essential vitality, were moving closer to death – a death, moreover, which they welcomed.

  In protest at being sent away to school, Genie refused to talk to the other girls. Instead, she allowed her repulsion and fascination with these sequestered nuns to take the place of friendship. She took to creeping around their wing, spying on them. She would hide in the bushes by the large bay window of their peach-coloured lounge, and watch them peacably waiting for death. She came to know their death clothes, their death stoops, their death smell and the gluey yellow death cast to their eyes; and their breath, when she caught a waft in passing, even held a taste of death. Genie would avert her eyes if she encountered any of these nuns in person, for fear of looking death full in the face. Hadn’t Paul done just that in Mauritius? And had this not killed something in him?

  After the sleepwalking incident, Genie was moved to a room on the chapel corridor. These were single rooms, intended for older girls, but here the housemistress could keep a closer eye on her. A false sense of quiet was maintained in this part of the school to preserve the sanctity of the chapel. Genie would sometimes catch bits of muted hymn in her sleep or wake to the click of rosary beads as they swung from the hip of a passing nun. It was ghostly and lonely there, until she met Eloise.

  One night Genie heard a rap on the fire-hatch above her bed. Before she could answer, the little door was pushed open, and a figure climbed through from the next room, onto her bed, and Genie’s legs.

  Gerroff, said Genie. You’re hurting me.

  For such an ethereal-looking being, the girl was heavy.

  Sorry.

  She sat by Genie’s feet. She was holding a small bottle. She unscrewed the lid and waved it under her nose and sniffed it. Genie could feel by her reaction that it stung. She held out the bottle.

  Want some?

  No.

  Genie must have sounded afraid. The girl’s eyes narrowed.

  How old are you?

  Thirteen.

  Christ. They’re putting babies in here.

  Genie asked the wraith how old she was. Nearly fifteen, she said. In her mouth the ‘tee
n’ had the sound of a fork tapped on the rim of a crystal glass.

  That small door in the wall connected them, and, though they would knock in warning before climbing through, Eloise always ended up treading on some part of her, or she on Eloise. Eloise was so thin, Genie could feel the bones through the blankets as she swore at her. Life, for Eloise, was full of things to swear at. Genie would sit on her bed as Eloise talked about sex in an offhand manner and sniffed that liquid which made her laugh and cry. She always offered Genie the bottle and Genie always refused, fascinated. Genie liked to watch her. And Eloise would look at her, moon-eyed, and stroke her skin.

  Where are you from? she asked Genie one night.

  My mum is from Mauritius. And my dad is too. It’s a tiny island in –

  I know where it is. That’s where my mum’s family were from. Though they came back to France before my mum was born.

  Maybe our families knew each other! Genie gasped. Maybe we’re related!

  Maybe, said Eloise. Or maybe my family used to own your family.

  One Saturday, Genie followed Eloise through a gap in the hedge of the hockey field, out into an alley and down into town. On that first visit, Genie swaggered the seafront like a sailor on shore-leave, dazzled by the novelty. But when, three weeks later, Paul came to visit, she walked around more slowly, wanting to immerse herself in a place she realised she only half lived in, shut away as she was in the convent for most of the week. How white the place was! How she and Paul stood out. And that gave her a sense of the place being acutely English in a way that somehow felt very foreign. Like Eloise. But not like London at all.

  They were on their way to the station so Paul could catch his train home, when Genie saw Eloise. It was the first time she had thought of Eloise as pretty, Genie realised, as she approached. Eloise was pretty in the slight, tattered way certain wildflowers were pretty: long-limbed, slim, a long-stemmed flower. It was the ragged fringe and the pale eyes and maybe also the drifts of cigarette smoke that hung about her. But she had dense, compressed features, almost Slavic, which threw you off somewhat. It took a while for people to work out that she was beautiful, Eloise would later inform her.