In a Good Light

by Clare Chambers

  26

  MY FIRST PARTY: the event for which I had spent years memorising the complete lyrics of Kool and the Gang, rehearsing dance routines to the Top Forty in front of Dawn’s mirror, and experimenting with the eyeshadow testers in Boots.

  Now, as I stood in the stripped and cheerless sitting room, looking at the relief work of ripples in the carpet, and the patches of unpainted wall revealed by the furniture removals, waiting for it to begin, I suddenly started to doubt the relevance of my preparations.

  Christian and Wart were tinkering with the amplifier, which was misbehaving; Penny was distributing bowls of peanuts and dishes of gold-tipped cocktail cigarettes in shades of turquoise and pink, while Martina chopped up carrots and celery for the dip – a salty concoction of tinned cream and onion soup powder. They had originally planned a more ambitious menu, but this had become a casualty of the protracted bathing arrangements.

  The dress I had brought from home, I now saw, was all wrong. It was a red velvet shift, one of Penny’s unworn castoffs, which made me look as shapely as a pillar box, and was far too dressy for the occasion. Both Penny and Martina were in jeans and knee-length chunky knits. Fortunately Penny came to my rescue and lent me a long black mohair sweater, which offered me some protection from hypothermia and ridicule.

  Every so often the speakers would give a loud crackle and a burst of Bruce Springsteen would erupt into the flat, making the windows tremble in their frames. It was ten o’ clock and there was no sign of any guests. I wandered into the kitchen to see if I could help. Martina was warming her hands at the hob: all four gas rings blazed blue. Through the glass of the back door I could see a few grey flakes beginning to fall.

  ‘Snow,’ Penny groaned. ‘I hope that doesn’t put people off.’

  As she said this there was the clubbing of feet on the fire escape and half a dozen people erupted noisily through the door, followed by a flurry of snowflakes. They deposited plastic carrier bags of drink on the table before joining Martina at the hob to thaw out. With the confidence of an established group they seemed to take command of the place, and their smoke and shouted conversation soon filled the room. No one remarked on my presence.

  ‘This is Christian’s little sister, Esther,’ Penny announced to the backs of the closed circle. A few heads turned, politely, before their attention was claimed again by the kitchen door opening to admit fresh arrivals. For the first time it occurred to me that just being Christian’s sister wasn’t the guarantee of social triumph that I’d always supposed.

  From the sitting room came an explosion of music: the amplifier was fixed. Martina was handing out polystyrene cups, urging people to help themselves to drink. Apart from slimline tonic, an accompaniment to the bottle of vodka donated by Wart, there wasn’t much provision for non-drinkers. I tried some white wine, which smelled like the chemistry lab at school, medicinal and sour, and some red wine, which was worse. It was a mystery to me how the sweet and inoffensive grape could have been responsible. To take the taste away I had some of Martina’s onion dip: it was surprisingly nice, and reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since Newton Poppleford. Mealtimes here tended not to be observed. Since my arrival I’d only had that bowl of treacle pudding in the pub, toast and marmalade, and a cream scone. Craving salt, I went into the sitting room, ate a handful of peanuts, and felt much better. Bruce Springsteen was roaring, pertinently, about hungry hearts. Beneath my feet the floor throbbed in time to the bass. I felt myself gripped by the heightened self-awareness that often comes from feeling lonely in a crowd. I used to get it in the playground at Underwood. It’s a sensation of separateness that, if unchecked, develops into a complete defamiliarisation with your own body. My hands were strange, awkward appendages; my legs twitched as though I’d forgotten how to stand comfortably. I had realised that I wasn’t going to enjoy myself at the simple, immediate level, but I’d hoped to derive some pleasure from the detached observation of an unenjoyable experience. This strategy wasn’t working either.

  Christian must have seen me looking pained, as he came over and put a brotherly arm around my shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’ he shouted in my ear. I nodded. ‘Enjoying yourself?’ The smile I gave him in response must have been transparently false, as he laughed and said, ‘You’re bored,’ shaking his head at my half-hearted denials. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Parties are no fun when you’re sober. I’ll make it up to you. Tomorrow we’ll do whatever you like.’ And he ruffled my hair. This scrap of human sympathy worked to break the spell, and I was all right again, inhabiting my body with only average awkwardness.

  Penny, besieged by admirers, waved me over and performed bellowed introductions, but the music proved too loud to sustain anything but the most elementary conversation. One of the girls, whose hair was the colour of burnt sienna straight from the tube, took pity on me and drew me aside into the hall, where it was quieter. She was short and fat, and wore a long tasselled skirt and smock top. Her feet were small and planted well apart for balance, and her ankles, just visible between the tassels, were slim. It didn’t seem feasible that they could meet up with that great bulk of flesh around her middle. ‘Is this your first visit?’ she shouted, staring at me with smoky eyes. I nodded. ‘I expect it’s a bit overwhelming,’ she went on. ‘It’s probably put you off university for good.’

  ‘Yes it has,’ I agreed, and she blinked, affronted. I couldn’t be bothered to explain that on the contrary I was underwhelmed. I’d formed a romantic view, no doubt from television, that universities were rather like castles, with log fires, oak panelling and sun-dappled quads. Reality, as usual, had a more dismal cast.

  She asked me if I knew the area, and if I had been taken to this or that beauty spot, to all of which I answered no. I sensed my interviewer’s stamina beginning to evaporate, and was about to release her when she was rescued by one of her friends and rejoined her crowd with relief. ‘. . . blood out of a stone,’ I heard her say during a break in the music, and felt betrayed.

  There was no sign of Christian anywhere, and Penny was locked in an intense conversation with a bearded man in a denim jacket, who turned out to be her tutor, so I took refuge in Lynn’s room for a while. Christian had used it as a repository for some of the sitting room furniture, and the park bench was now stacked on the bed. I sat on this precarious structure for a while listening to the distant thump of the music, and wondered if Christian would notice my absence, but ten minutes passed and no one came looking. I thought I might chase away one form of boredom with another and knock off a chapter of The Mill on the Floss, then I remembered that Donovan had thrown it out of the train window. There was nothing for it but to rejoin the party. In the sitting room, Penny was still being talked at very earnestly by the bearded man, her face wearing the pinched expression of someone straining to lip-read.

  As I stepped into the hallway Martina’s door opened and Christian emerged, followed a moment or two later by Martina, whose make-up was smudged, from crying perhaps, or some other interference. He gave the back of her neck a reassuring squeeze and they parted.

  ‘What were you doing in there?’ I asked, catching him up in the kitchen, where he was helping himself to bitter from a cask.

  He frowned and shook his head, indicating that I should keep my voice down. ‘Comforting her. She’s a mess.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Oh, everything. She’s anorexic for a start. Hadn’t you noticed?’ I had of course noticed that the frame on which those whiskery sweaters hung was abnormally thin, but hadn’t thought to give the condition its name.

  ‘Why did she get like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s had it for years, off and on. She had this boyfriend she was really keen on, and he dumped her about six months ago and she’s just found out that his new girlfriend’s up the duff. She’s a bit of a depressive actually. I feel sorry for her.’

  ‘Penny doesn’t like her,’ I said, with a sudden flash of insight.

  Christian took a swig of be
er, leaving a crescent of foam on his upper lip. ‘They used to be good friends last year,’ he said. ‘But they’ve had a bit of a falling out lately.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This and that. Penny’s not very sympathetic to other people’s weaknesses. She thinks Martina’s trying it on. Which she probably is. Anyway, shh,’ he added, as we were joined at the kitchen table by Wart and someone in a gorilla mask.

  ‘He thought it was fancy dress,’ Wart explained, and then pointed at the polystyrene cup I was still clutching and burst out laughing. There was a large bite-shaped piece missing from the rim. Could I conceivably have swallowed it?

  ‘Hungry, were you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, starving,’ I said. ‘If I don’t get some proper food soon I’ll start on the furniture.’

  Christian and the gorilla had departed to rescue Penny. ‘I could make you some toast,’ Wart suggested. ‘I don’t suppose there’ll be anything much in here,’ he went on, yanking open the fridge door to release a gust of sour, fishy air. On Martina’s (labelled) shelf were a couple of natural yoghurts and a stick of floppy celery. The remaining contents were three cartons of milk, a cup of congealed fat with a piece of bacon rind sticking out like a drowned hand, and several open tins of tuna. Wart slammed the door in disgust. ‘Toast or nothing,’ he said, producing the two ends of a wholemeal loaf from the bread bin and posting them into the mouth of the toaster. ‘You were after a drink, too, weren’t you? Try this,’ he went on, handing me a fresh cup of what looked like Coke. I took a tentative sip. It was Coke all right, but with a warm aftertaste.

  ‘What’s in it?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘Vodka,’ Wart admitted. ‘Just a trace. Not enough to pickle a flea.’

  That onion dip had given me a violent thirst, so I took a few remedial gulps and immediately felt fantastically lightheaded and cheerful. Some of the other guests were starting to take an interest in my toast, which had sprung up, a little charred around the edges, but smelling malty and delicious.

  ‘Actually, I could do with some food,’ one girl said, advancing.

  ‘Well, you should have eaten before you came, then, shouldn’t you?’ said Wart, spreading the margarine in two swift strokes and stacking the slices on a plate. ‘Come on,’ he said, steering me through the crowd. ‘Let’s find somewhere to sit down.’

  We ended up in Lynn’s room, balanced on the park bench, with the plate of toast between us. It seemed much wobblier this time, since that Coke-with-a-trace-of-Vodka, and much funnier too. Just above our heads the skylight was scattered with frilly snow.

  ‘I didn’t like you earlier,’ I said. ‘But I do now.’

  ‘I grow on people,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s what Penny said.’

  ‘Did she? Did she say that?’ Wart seemed genuinely delighted. He started to tell me a long, involved story about some local scandal concerning a yachtswoman and her transsexual lover who were accused of trying to bump off the husband. His arm was along the back of the bench, and he kept reaching out to tuck my hair behind my ear to stop it screening my face. ‘There were pictures in the paper of the two of them wearing long cloaks and boots, like a pair of witches. It was all as kinky as hell.’ Stroke, stroke, went his fingertips in my hair. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling: I wanted to give my scalp a good scratch.

  ‘I suppose you’ve got a boyfriend back home,’ he suddenly said, squinting at me with bloodshot eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, marvelling at how shamelessly the lie slid out.

  ‘Oh yeah. What’s he called?’

  ‘Donovan.’ Before I could stop myself I’d blurted out the first name that came into my head. I froze, appalled. Where had that come from? Why hadn’t I stuck to something plain? Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men. What was I thinking of? To invent a boyfriend was one thing, but to cast a real person in the role was quite another. Suppose Wart dropped his name into the conversation in Christian’s hearing. What an amateur I was in the art of deceit. Two lies in and I was already squirming.

  ‘Unusual name,’ Wart was saying. He hummed a few bars of ‘Catch the Wind’. He had at least stopped fiddling with my ear.

  ‘You’re a nice girl, Esther,’ he said, yawning extravagantly. I realised he was completely drunk. ‘You’re natural, and that’s nice. You don’t bother about making an impression.’

  ‘I do bother,’ I protested. ‘I’m just no good at it.’

  The door opened, coming to rest against the back of the wicker chair, and Christian stood there, swaying slightly. Or perhaps it was me that was swaying. He looked rather disconcerted to see me and Wart installed on our perch under the eaves.

  ‘Oh there you are. He hasn’t been trying any funny business, has he?’ he asked, frowning at Wart.

  Wart held up his hands, a picture of aggrieved innocence.

  ‘Would you challenge him to a duel if he had?’ I asked.

  ‘No, but I’d kick his arse,’ Christian replied. The image of Christian getting physical on my behalf was so appealing that I almost wished some ‘funny business’ had occurred.

  ‘I made her some toast,’ Wart said, reproachfully. ‘Since you neglected to feed her.’

  ‘We’ve been having a nice cosy chat,’ I added.

  ‘Yes, Esther’s been telling me about—’

  ‘I think I’d like to go to bed now,’ I said, hastily. ‘But my room seems to be full of furniture.’

  ‘You can sleep in our bed,’ Christian offered. ‘With Penny.’

  ‘Where will you sleep?’

  ‘I’ll be all right. When everyone’s gone I’ll shift the stuff out of here and crash on Lynn’s bed. Don’t worry about me.’

  I thought of messed-up Martina on the other side of the wall, who needed comforting behind closed doors. Christian and I faced each other, tipsily. ‘No, it’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m not tired any more.’

  When I awoke, in Lynn’s bed, I could tell just from the smothered quality of the silence, even before I had looked up at the blind white skylight, that there would be thick snow outside. I was the first up – a legacy of the paper round. I knew there would be nothing to do but clearing up party wreckage, so I had a bath, dressed, and got back into bed until I heard sounds of stirring.

  After a breakfast of coffee, Christian and I took a tray and a couple of bin bags and walked up to the woods, where there was a good slope for sledging. The girls had opted to stay behind and tidy up. Penny was planning to give Martina some counselling while they worked, and had in any case a limited appetite for the sort of childish fun that might lead to dishevelment. Martina, whose condition made her extra-sensitive to the cold, couldn’t be tempted outdoors, but lent me her boots instead. Wart was still asleep on the park bench, wrapped in the piece of carpet, like a tramp.

  Christian and I waded across the field, carving deep furrows as we went. The sky was a clear, Alpine blue; fat globes of snow hung from the trees’ bare branches, and the sunlight was hard and bright. Christian, who was looking less than handsome with a woolly skull-cap, red eyes and day-old stubble, began to whistle through his teeth – his normal silence-filler. Instead of climbing the stile he tried to vault the wire fence, catching his foot in the top strand and pitching himself into the drift on the other side. He staggered to his feet, laughing and spitting. ‘Perfect hangover cure,’ he said, shaking himself like a dog.

  ‘Alan Fry chucked himself off a balcony into a snowdrift once, to get away from Aunty Barbara,’ I remembered. The image had stayed with me over the years. Every so often, as now, it surfaced.

  ‘I don’t blame him,’ said Christian. ‘I’d have done the same.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s one of those women who have to make a drama out of everything. They can’t just get on with things normally. They have to turn everything into some sort of emotional banquet. A lot of women are like that. Especially round here.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘And neither’s Mum.’
>
  ‘No, but she’s insane in other ways. Penny has occasional tendencies. Martina – she’s a ravenous emotional cannibal.’ This made me laugh. ‘I’m starting to get hungry,’ added Christian, quick to tire of female psychology. He packed a snowball in his gloved hands and bowled it into the trees, where it detonated an explosion of snow and startled magpies. ‘We’ll go to the Wheel for lunch. They do this awesome beef and Guinness pie.’

  ‘Won’t that be expensive?’

  Christian shrugged carelessly.

  ‘Penny says you owe Wart a fortune.’

  ‘He might let me off,’ said Christian. ‘His parents are loaded. The bank, on the other hand, probably won’t . . .’ He grinned at my stricken face. ‘I’m not worried. I’ll pay it off one day. In the meantime, we’ve got to live.’

  We’d reached the top of the slope by now; some kids with proper toboggans must have beaten us to it as the snow there was already disfigured with tracks. We chose an unspoilt section, free from hazards like tree stumps, and took it in turns to ride the tray to the bottom. The bin bags proved faster, but less comfortable, offering no protection against protruding twigs, and were soon in shreds.

  The sight of Christian, age twenty, five foot ten, bombing downhill crouched on a plastic tray, was to me both hilarious and poignant. We’ll never do this again, I thought. Already my enjoyment was tainted by nostalgia.

  ‘Don’t mention the money business to Mum and Dad,’ Christian said to me, at one of our changeovers. He’d obviously been thinking about it, in spite of his professed indifference. ‘You know they’re completely weird about money. It’s a generation thing.’

  ‘I don’t think it is. It’s just them.’ By way of example I told him about the latest eccentricities at the Old Schoolhouse. Just after Christmas Grandpa Percy had opened the front door to two men claiming to be buying antiques. With his blessing they had loaded the mahogany card table, an oak Bible box, and a walnut writing desk into their van, along with a number of non-antique items: camera, jewellery and radio, and driven off, waving cheerfully, never to be seen again. Mum and Dad had decided that most of these items couldn’t or needn’t be replaced, and then had qualms that the generous insurance payout had therefore been dishonestly acquired, and promptly donated it to Oxfam.