We went our separate ways for a while, me to the library to use their free internet, Nate to the Residential Lets Agency in the middle of town. I checked my email and found that I had one reply to one of my (and Nate’s) many job applications. An interview at a supermarket in the next town to ours. It did a little to lift my spirits, and I even picked up some cook books for Nate, something I wouldn’t have thought to do while in the depths of my mood the previous week.
Still, the trip to the library tired me, and I went home after, made myself a cup of tea, and got back into bed for a lie down, sitting up after a while to flick through some of the recipes in the library books. My mental tiredness made my body long for sleep, and I couldn’t shake it, even a short nap did nothing to make me feel more alert. If anything it made my mind even slower.
When Nate came in he had a few printed pages of lettings, and he’d picked up some potatoes from the greengrocer.
“He was going to chuck ‘em, but I said give ‘em to me, and I can make mash to go with my stew,” he slapped the papers down at the foot of the bed, “want a cuppa?”
I nodded and he made tea for both of us. “Bitch in the letting place was not happy with me. I says to her – I’m looking for a one bedroom, that takes DSS, and she tells me there’s nothing that I can get on one payment. So I tell her there’s two of us, and she goes all pursed lips and says that because we’re a couple we’ll only get the one lot of DSS. So I say, he’s not my wife, he’s my boyfriend – and as the government isn’t going to recognise that in a million years, I’m going to bloody well collect two lots of housing benefit.”
He put the mugs of tea down and flipped through the pages, showing me the tiny pictures. “So she pulled these out and made it pretty clear she wanted me gone. Still, some of them look nice enough. This one’s even above a charity shop.”
“So?”
“So, if we’re up early we can always go down and have a pick through the donations that haven’t been taken in yet,” he said with a wink, though I knew he wasn’t one-hundred percent joking.
“We can go look at them soon, can’t we?” I said, and passed him the books I’d taken out, “I got these for you.”
He smiled, and his eyes softened. “One shag and you’re domesticated.”
“Shut up,” I said, shoving his knee.
“No, it’s a nice thing,” he opened the topmost book, “hey, look, wild berry jam. I’ll have a go at that.”
The cook books kept him occupied for a while, so I laid back down and watched him read, marking pages with excited fingers. I wondered if I’d loved anything in my previous life as much as Nate loved cooking now. He must have liked it before to have such a grasp of it, maybe it came from muscle memory. I envied him that pleasure.
“How did the job hunt go?” he asked, putting the books to one side.
“I’ve got an interview next week.”
“That’s great! We might not even have to sign you up for DSS.”
“If I get it.”
“Which you will, they’d be mad not to hire you. Or stupid, which is a trait I’ve noticed in many interviewers over my long and distinguished career as a jobless mass.”
His certainty that I’d get the job made me uncomfortable, and he sensed it, changing the subject.
“Anyway, as you’re still footloose and employment free, how about coming out with me tomorrow and helping me to get some ingredients,” he tapped the cover of one of the books. “I fancy making some jams, maybe a bit of a fruit crumble too, and I can get some cheap sugar from the Asian market under the indoor car park.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, and my body didn’t instantly ache at the prospect of going out, maybe because it wasn’t anything weighty, like looking for a job or house.
“OK, I’ll come.”
“Yes you will,” he said, eyebrows twitching with innuendo.
I kicked at him and he leapt off the bed. “You’ll have to wait, I’m off to mash my spuds.”
“Sounds painful.”
“Ah, but so worth it.”
I laid back on the bed, smiling to myself and listening to him crash around in the tiny kitchen.
We went out picking the next day, ASDA carrier bags stuffed in our jeans pockets, Nate in wellies with a hole in the heel, me in my trainers with one of Nate’s hoodies over my t-shirt. We walked towards the railway line, then along it on a slim bit of pavement, until the houses stumbled to a halt, and only grass and stubby trees remained.
“Those are elderberries,” Nate said, pointing out clusters of dark purple berries each the size of a polystyrene ball. “I want them for a jelly, to go on pork and things, blackberries I need for jamming, crab apples for jams and chutney, and haws for ketchup.”
“You’re not going to start small?”
“This is small. Later I can pickle chestnuts, dry and grind hazelnuts, pick wild onions and garlic, maybe even lambs lettuce.”
He was so excited that it made me laugh, and I set about the picking with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. Nate climbed a trembling apple tree and picked it bare, throwing the tiny, hard fruits down to me, where I put them in bags.
The elders proved tricky, as most of the good berries were at the top, on slim branches that were too fragile to climb, but too tall to reach. But, fate it seemed was on our side, and Nate found a fly tip a few hundred metres from a cluster of elder trees. Amongst the old fencing, carpet off cuts, fridges and piles of rubble, he found a bag of coat hangers. He cut a straight stick from a tree (‘hazel, always grows nice and straight’) with a penknife that hung from his keys, and jammed the hook from the hanger into one end to make a prop for reaching down the berries.
We picked two bags full, then moved further up the line, gathering stick in tow, to where the blackberries grew nice and close to the path. They smelt sweet as we picked them from the wiry tangle of thorns and tough vines. Our fingers were covered in sticky, itchy juice streaks, purple and red, with burrs and prickly brown residue clinging to them. As we picked, Nate told me where to find the best berries (avoiding the lower ones with were pissed on by passing dogs, and looking for the sweet suntraps that bred the softest, lushest fruits). It was a mindless and easy job, and we picked loads before Nate decided that we had enough to be getting on with.
Walking home, he stopped occasionally to pick a few more, then a few more, until our load had almost doubled. Both of us were carrying four groaning carriers, and by the time we got back to the flat I was exhausted. I put a DVD into the player and laid down on the sofa for a rest while in the kitchen Nate washed the mountains of berries and picked out stalks, withered leaves and dead spiders. A winey scent filled the flat, along with the slapping sounds of water.
Nate emerged with stained hands and rummaged in his chest of drawers for old t-shirts before going back into the kitchen. Water hissed and boiled, berries plopped into the liquid and I heard him chopping chopping chopping. I saw later that he’d filled the old shirts with stewed berries and suspended them over bowls to catch the juice for jellying.
We had apple and blackberry crumble for dinner, served with great globs of custard that he’d whipped up from a tin of old powder and some UHT milk.
It was delicious.
Over the next few days Nate dived into jam making, collecting jars from people he knew from the pub or the job centre, assembling them in the kitchen and washing them before sterilising them in the oven. He bought sugar from the Asian market in bulk bags, stewed fruit, chilled plates in the fridge and bottled the final product. Soon there wasn’t a utensil in the kitchen that wasn’t stained purple, and at night he came to bed smelling like bubbling vats of blackberries.
I watched this jam mania with interest, but had little part in it. My tablets were slowly, slowly, starting to work, and I didn’t want to waste my daily amount of ‘giving a shit’ on helping Nate when he was so obviously enjoying himself all alone. Instead I hunted for a job, and pulled together a decent interview outfit from several charity sho
ps – a black suit (the jacket and trousers of which almost matched), a white shirt, and a blue and white striped tie.
I was also coping with some of my tablet’s side effects, mainly that they made me feel really sick for about five minutes every morning, and that my skin had become itchy all over. Even my lips. Still, it was a small price to pay when I realised that my mood was slowly improving.
The day to go back to AA came around, and Nate stuck a few jars of jam into a cardboard box and took them along. I hadn’t expected it of him, but the giving out of preserves was less WI with him, and more an extension of his ‘all for one and one for all’ philosophy.
It was like we’d never been away. The same posters, the same chairs, the same smell, and Sal with her same folders. The only things that seemed so have changed were the beads woven into Cora’s hair, and the number of belly rolls under Marg’s shirt (both of which had decreased).
“Some old faces joining us this evening,” Sal said, with the kind of relish I had learnt to expect from government employees who have you in a corner.
Marg and Greg looked about as happy to be there as I felt, even Cora raised a sullen eyebrow and flicked her choppy black fringe into her field of vision.
Sal, oblivious, took a sheaf of rubber-banded cards from her capacious handbag and started passing them around. There were printed like cheques, made out to each of us.
“I hope you understand that I was against using money as an incentive,” she said, “really, this is all about helping you, and I see that as reward enough.”
Great, now she was going to sulk all evening. Nate and I took seats and cast cautious looks over at Marg and Greg, both of whom also looked pissed off with Sal’s attitude. I was prepared for her to start in on Cora, her pet project, but to my surprise, Sal turned her chair to face me, wrinkled apple cheeks sagging as she frowned, considering me.
“So, Connor, what’s happened in your life recently?”
She knew, of course she knew. Probably everyone in town knew, and I’d been stupid to even think that they wouldn’t. A man losing his memory is gossip enough, in a sick slowing-down-to-look-at-car-accidents way, but a man who loses his memory and ‘turns’ gay?
It was probably all over town before I’d even shown up at Nate’s that night.
I hated her for bringing it up, and from the way Nate bristled at my side, I could tell he was apoplectic.
“Nothing,” I said. I wasn’t embarrassed, or ashamed, but I wasn’t going to let her show me up, not in front of my only friends.
“And your wife....Emma, isn’t it? She’s alright?”
“She’s fine,” I said tightly.
“How are things at home? Getting along OK?”
“Thing’s at home are fucking fantastic. Move on,” Nate said roughly.
Sal looked like she wanted to push the issue, God knows what I’d done to piss her off, aside from, you know, avoiding her group for months, but one look at Nate apparently put her off.
“Cora, why don’t you tell us all about your new school?”
“Well, that was a waste of time,” Nate said as we left the school, waving Greg and Marg off as they wandered towards the pub. “I don’t think we’ll be going back.”
“Not even for the twenty quid?”
He gave me a serious look. “Not even for a solid gold brain as big as my fist.”
“I don’t think the NHS can stretch to that.”
“Then they are shit out of luck,” Nate put his arm around me, a strong, clumsy gesture, but one I appreciated. “Come on, I’ll get us some chips with the change in my pocket.”
“And who could resist an offer like that?”
Nate was true to his word and dug out ten and twenty pence pieces in the fluorescent light of the chippy, until he had enough for a portion of chips. Lots of salt and vinegar instead of ketchup, which cost 10p a sachet. We sat on some concrete blocks at the edge of the canal and ate hot, damp chips with our fingers, munching and fighting each other for the crispest, saltiest specimens.
“I found us a flat today,” Nate said, tilting his head back to look at the light pollution that arced, reddish and dingy, over our heads, flecked with feeble stars. “It was in the paper, a one bed place over a Gamestation in the town centre. Little roof garden, new bathroom, double oven and a skylight in the bedroom.” He tilted his head and looked at me. “What do you think?”
“Sounds great,” I said, looking at the soggy chip paper.
“If you still want to live together.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Just...you’ve been a bit out of it. Off with me,” Nate muttered.
“I haven’t meant to be.”
He shrugged. “I know. I just wanted to make sure.”
I put my hand on his shoulder, salt crystals on my fingers splintering against his leather jacket.
“I want to live with you. I want to eat your jam, even that disgusting brown one, and bitch about the job centre, that new bloke on Country File, and the cost of cigarettes going up. And I want us to fuck, as much as possible, and lie in every day. In fact, until one of us gets a job, I don’t want to leave the bed until noon.”
Nate’s smile was wolfish in the dark. “A proposal I can get on board with,” he looked down at the wet, glistening pavement. The tangle of elders to the left of us whickered in the wind.
“What is it?” I asked, sensing that all still wasn’t right with him.
“What about him? The bloke from before?”
I shook my head. “There was no one before you.”
“Con-”
“No...I needed to know about him, about Simon. But I can’t remember how it felt when I was with him. I’ll remember that he happened, but you – you are the first, the only, man that I have ever-”
Nate kissed me, sharp and salty, knocking the word back into my mouth. But when his lips left mine, it surfaced anyway.
“Loved.”
His eyes were berry dark, the wind stirring his brown hair into odd flicks and curls. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to speak, just get up and walk away, his trainers padding on the pavement, a stray dog that had had its fill of a stranger’s affection, and didn’t want to get tied down.
“I love you too.”
Chapter Fifteen
He told me he loves me.
I wrote the words in the dialog box and waited. I didn’t know why I was back at the internet café, alone, writing to Coop. Maybe it was because I wanted him to know that I was settled, that I was OK. God only knew what a tangle my life must have looked to him from the outside. Maybe I just wanted to prove it to myself. That Nate had said ‘I love you too’ and then again that night, in bed, whispering it once when he thought I was asleep, from the doorway of the bathroom with the light spilling out.
“I love you.”
I took a sip from my cup of tea and checked the rest of my emails. A few flat listings had turned up, answers to my inquiries about bedsits in and around town. I thought of the cramped little rooms and their tiny, inadequate bathrooms. Now I didn’t have to worry about moving my bag of stuff into one of those matchboxes.
The message box chirruped and Coop’s answer appeared. Good for you. You’re lucky.
Everything OK with you?
Yeah, everything’s fine...actually, I’m seeing someone. So, I don’t think I’ll be able to you know, keep this up.
I was surprised that he was pulling away from me, after he’d said he’d be there if I needed to talk.
Did I do something to upset you?
No. It’s not that. I just think I should focus on him, what we have. He might not see it my way if he knows I’m talking to you.
He had a point. OK, well, good luck with him, you know where I am if you need me.
Same here, and I really am happy for you.
Thanks. You too.
He signed off, and I finished my tea while I did my job search. To be honest, I didn’t know why I was bothering. I’d sent out so many appl
ications, and only one had come back with a job offer. I must have filled out my details several hundred times, and it was all for nothing. Or nearly nothing, which was somehow worse.
Nate was in an even worse position, he’d been applying for far longer and had only had two interviews, one of which he’d turned up for and been told that the interview had been cancelled. The other one he’d never heard back from, despite a promise to phone him the next day.
I was starting to see that there was nothing in my short term future aside from time, the dole, and job applications. All my hope of finding a job, even a shit one mopping floors at the local school, or swabbing pub toilets, was gone.
Nate picked me up outside the café with an Aldi carrier bag in one hand.
“I’ve got my eye on some apples over by the old church. Only crabs but I can still make something good out of them.” He raised the carrier bag. “I bought us some lunch. Mostly stuff from home, but, we can eat it outside, have a picnic sort of thing.”
I could tell by his voice that he thought it was a half stupid idea, but I grinned.
“Great, as long as I don’t have to climb anything stupid.”
“You can stay with your feet firmly planted on the ground.”
We went up to the old church, a flint studded little thing with a stumpy steeple and half rotten oak door. The gravestones in the tiny, wildly tangled yard were skewed like teeth in an alcoholic’s gob, and behind the crooked steel fencing most of the stained glass had been smashed out of the windows. I kicked at a condom wrapper on the sparse gravel of the path.
“Nice.”
“It’s bloody Goths,” Nate said with a smirk, “all amped up on their little vampire books, sneak a half of something from their parent’s cupboards and come over here for a bit of slap and nibble.”
I pulled a face and Nate laughed.
Edging around the back of the church was a trial in and of itself, it was so overgrown with nettles, elders and small sycamores that we had to pick up sticks and hack our way along. Weathered gargoyles grimaced down at us, and we trod rainbow glass shards into the mud. The whole rear wall of the building was half fallen down, the roof having partially fallen in. Nate picked his way towards the crab apple tree that had originally grown outside the church, before spreading its roots inside.
After The Fall Page 15