The Queen of Bloody Everything

by Joanna Nadin

  I listen for signs of sex, then, when there is no telltale groan, or rhythmic grunt, merely of life. But there is nothing. Just the traffic from Princes Avenue filtering in through thin glass and the warped, cracked wood of a dormer. ‘Tom?’ I try.

  I hear the roll of a body on a creaking mattress. A low moan.

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘I – it’s me . . . Dido,’ I add to my stammer, in case I am unmemorable after all.

  ‘Shit. Shit.’ I hear the rustle of sheets, the thud of feet onto more bare boards. ‘Come in.’

  Pride pricked into a deflated balloon with the realization he has forgotten after all, I turn the plastic handle that is already hot in my hand, push the door ajar.

  The room is wide, and long. A desk and chair and armchair under one eave, an unusually wide double bed – two singles put together, I think – under the other, on which he now sits, in creased T-shirt and boxers and a rumpled apology of a smile.

  ‘I didn’t forget,’ he says before I can say my own sorry. ‘Late one last night. I was just catching up.’

  I nod as if I’ve been there, am always there, as if it’s nothing. ‘I can go,’ I offer. ‘If you’re tired.’

  ‘No,’ he insists, shaking his head slowly. ‘Christ. Come in, come in.’ He pats the bed next to him and I walk over, sit down, feel the weight of my bag pull me backwards and have to hold onto the edge of the bed to keep steady.

  ‘What’s in there? A dead body?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I say, thinking of the five changes of outfit, second pair of Docs, hairdryer, make-up bag, and two books – one Stendhal, one Salinger – that I have packed in the pathetic hope of creating the perfect impression of the lit-student-to-be.

  ‘Here.’ He reaches to wrest it off my back, then drops it next to the bed, a bed I wonder immediately if I am to sleep in, if I am allowed to sleep in. ‘That can wait. Tell me everything.’

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Everything,’ he confirms. ‘Starting with that excuse for a sister of mine.’

  So I do. I tell him everything. Starting with Harry’s latest object of desire – some private-school kid with a scowl and a dick the size of a salami, she claims, along with him being The One (honestly, Dido, I really think he is this time) – and ending on the stagnant state of Saffron Walden, because even though I’ve only been in the big city for an hour, I can see the small town for what it is.

  And in between we riff on the Smiths’ split, Clause 28, the disappearance of Bovril crisps; we eat cheese on toast and drink flat Coke and the vinegary dregs of a wine bottle; and he puts on some trousers and I take off my boots, and we lie back on the bed and watch the sun set in the corner of the dormer through the haze of dope smoke and the pleasant fug of alcohol.

  We don’t talk about his parents, and the silence that clots the house, clings to the curtains and carpet with every sigh of disappointment, every look that says You have failed. We don’t talk about you, either, though there is plenty to say: the way you’ve taken to slinking into your bedroom with the telephone, trailing its extension cord down the stairs like a begging-to-be-lit dynamo fuse, slipping out at odd times just for five minutes, then an hour later returning, breathless and ruddy, from God knows where. I should demand an explanation, play mother to the persistent teenager you insist on being. But I don’t think I want your truth, just as Tom avoids theirs.

  The room is dark now, the street lights only managing to sneak in far enough to bathe a patch of floor in their orange glow.

  ‘Pub?’ he asks.

  I don’t bother with my yes. Just heave myself up and pull on a Doc, my sock sending a puff of stale feet into the already musty air. I must smell, I think. Unwashed since this morning, my floor-hung clothes are now infused with sweat and smoke and other people’s fast-food lunches. But Tom still smells of last night, and clearly doesn’t care, and I am drunk and drugged enough to join him.

  And so the pub it is.

  It’s called the Queens and squats at the top of the park, straddling the back-to-backs off Beverley Road and the bedsit-divided mansions off Newland and Princes. Inside it could be any pub – could be the Duke on the High Street on a Saturday night: all brass and bad carpet and worse hair. Except that this is flushed with the exoticism of unfamiliar accents, music, clothes – Manchester baggy carried over the Pennines on the cross-country train, at least a year before it will find its way to Essex – all sprinkled liberally like fairy dust, dust that rubs off on me and makes me glow in achievement and anticipation.

  I can’t remember the names and faces of the parade of people I am introduced to that night; I don’t need to, because I don’t leave Tom’s side for any longer than it takes to queue and then pee in the peach-painted toilets. Then, five double vodkas and three hours later, laughing, clinging to each other as if the world might spin too fast and send us tumbling, we stumble back through the park, along paths, past statues that we salute and serenade, across flower beds we tiptoe through, avoiding daffodils and dog shit, then along the yellow-brick road, through the door of 114 and up the forty-eight stairs to bed.

  Yes, to bed.

  Did you know that, Edie? That that’s when it happened; when he finally gave in to my puppy-dog pleading eyes and raging hormones and shagged me?

  If I make it sound empty, meaningless, then I’m misleading you. Because it is everything but.

  It is everything that my first time with Jimmy should have been, and nothing like it was.

  It is slow, and breathtakingly rapid.

  It is tender, and brutal.

  It is never-ending, and over too soon.

  Do I tell him I love him? God, no. I am not that brave, or foolish. But in the weak shafts of half-light as night turns to morning, I muster the courage for a question, ask, ‘Is this . . . Are we . . . ?’

  He smiles, a flash of white in the blur. ‘. . . A thing?’

  I nod.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Dido Sylvia Jones, I think we are a thing.’

  She’s sitting in the armchair when I open my eyes. Has been there a while, I guess from the almost empty mug of tea that sits on the floor beside her. She has a mass of blonde hair and an upturned button of a nose that belongs on screen or in a story. I know without asking who she is. I, on the other hand, it seems, am somewhat of a mystery.

  ‘Hello,’ she says, curiously.

  I sit up, clutching sheets to me, though I’m still wearing a T-shirt – mine, not his.

  ‘Tom?’ I say.

  He groans and rolls over, reaching across the expanse of sheet and the crack between beds that has, I notice with both sadness and relief, widened to a gulf in the night.

  ‘Oh, you are in there, then,’ she says.

  It’s Tom’s turn to sit up. He’s not so suitably attired, his back a patchy red and marked with lines that I tell myself, tell her telepathically, are just indentations from the creased sheets.

  ‘Della,’ he says. ‘What the fuck?’

  But his face is pale, and I feel his panic – that he has been caught out, can see who I am in the cold light of the freezing morning: a cuckoo, no more than that. Just Dido. His sister’s friend. The girl next door.

  ‘I should go,’ I say.

  ‘No, no,’ Della says. ‘You enjoy it. While it lasts. I’m off anyway. Places to go, people to see.’

  She stands, knocking over the tea. ‘Oops,’ she deadpans.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ Tom says.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Della replies, her acting skills wearing thin.

  I shrink back, though I am invisible already, it seems, replaced by the drama, the backstory of these two. This girl who flings herself at the door, this fool boy who follows her, a snatched towel wrapped around his waist.

  I am alone then, naked and goose-pimpled, the electric heater failing to warm the air above breath-misting levels; last night’s promise, its platitudes, failing to steady the too-fast thrum of my heart. He didn’t mean any of it, I realize now. It was a lie, thoug
h he needn’t have bothered; he was already inside me.

  I push that image out, picture them downstairs instead, him pleading, her pouting, eyes wet with the threat of tears. I feel my own well up, feel the prickle of salt and the run of snot as I gasp out a sob.

  I will not do this.

  I will not be made a fool of.

  I will go. Now. Before he gets back. So that he can’t see me, see that I care.

  I don’t care.

  I don’t care.

  I—

  ‘Di?’

  I look up from my rucksack, yesterday’s stained knickers in my hand.

  ‘Di, what are you doing?’

  I look away again. ‘Going,’ I manage. I push my pants down inside the canvas, grab at clean ones. ‘I’ll change my train. Or something.’ Or sleep at the station. Or call David. He’ll come, I know he will.

  ‘But . . . I don’t want you to go.’

  I pause, hear the shudder of my breath, the soft buzz of the bar heater.

  ‘Della – she’s a drama queen,’ he says. ‘This was . . . a stunt. That’s all. We’re not . . . we haven’t for a while now.’

  I want to believe him, want to hold on to this sliver of hope so hard it will crystallize into a diamond.

  ‘I told her about you,’ he says then.

  ‘Told her what?’

  He crouches down, reaches for my hand.

  I let him take it.

  ‘That we’re . . . that we’re a thing.’

  I sniff.

  ‘Do you still want to be a thing?’ he asks.

  I laugh then, wipe my eyes, my nose on my already damp shoulder. ‘Yes,’ I nod. ‘I want to be a thing.’

  And so despite our stale morning breath, despite Della, despite what Harry might think, and Angela might say, despite Jimmy, despite my lopsided, cack-handed pubic hair, a thing we become.

  We are a thing that night on the doorstep as we get in from the pub; we are a thing the next morning, sheets pulled high over our heads as we stare at each other in wonder in the warmth of our makeshift tent; we are a thing on the damp platform of Paragon station as we say our goodbyes. Not a fumbling, forgettable one-night stand, but a thing. Something. Something bigger, better, with a shared life, a history – a glorious, brilliant one. And a shining future too.

  The train gets in at ten and I call you from the station, bursting with it, so oblivious to anything but my own happiness I can’t hear the slur of your words, though they drag like fingers through treacle.

  ‘Edie!’ I babble. ‘Is the car fixed? Can you get me?’

  ‘Can’t you get a taxi?’ you ask. ‘I gave you money.’

  ‘I lost it,’ I lie, even though telling you I turned it into a round of vodka and tonics would probably elicit if not a yelp of delight then a quiet satisfaction.

  ‘Fine,’ you sigh before hanging up.

  I call Tom then, tell him I’m nearly home, promise again to wait until Christmas to tell anybody, until we can do it together, promise to call him tomorrow, promise that I miss him. Then, my addiction sated for a few moments, I hang up and wait in the safety of the phone box for the chug-chug of the 2CV. But when a car finally pulls up, it’s with the slow, satisfied purr of a Volvo.

  It’s David.

  ‘Your mother couldn’t come,’ he says, holding open the passenger door as if he is no more than a taxi.

  ‘I thought the car was fixed?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes. It’s more—’

  ‘Is she . . . is she ill?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  When I get back you are clearly drunk. ‘So how was it?’ you ask. ‘How did the haircut go down?’

  I glance at David, grit my teeth. ‘Edie,’ I plead.

  ‘We must celebrate!’ you insist. You grab at the drinks cabinet, snatch a bottle of something brown.

  ‘I think you’ve had enough,’ David says.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ you protest. ‘You’re just like her.’

  ‘Edie,’ he says, grabbing hold of your arm to steady you as you threaten to pitch into the fridge.

  I don’t know what’s going on. Or rather, I do. But I don’t want to see it, still less talk about it. I just want to be back in that attic room, on that avenue, listening to REM and planning our brilliant book-worthy tomorrow.

  Because those few nights have allowed me to fashion a future for us, a filigree structure so splendid, so tangible, that I can forget that I am viewing it through the beautiful skew of rose-tinted glasses and punch-drunk love. I can forget that its foundations are nothing more than youthful folly, his stilted words and my blind faith; that its walls are as weak as Jericho’s.

  I should have said something. Should have stopped it when I had the chance. Then maybe I could have stopped it all coming tumbling down.

  But instead I run up the stairs, slam my door, and flop onto my bed. Then, without even having to look, knowing what is cued up, I press play on the tape recorder, turn up the volume and let the Cocteau Twins carry me, let their Pearly Dewdrops drop and let myself swim back up the muddy Humber and into the sanctuary of his arms.

  The End of the Affair

  December 1987

  We were marked out. Had been since that hot August morning we moved here; not for being outsiders, incomers, because the town bustled with new lives, imported from Cambridge, Stansted, even London – at least the better parts – but for being the wrong sort of settler. But as I shrank from the stares, hid behind your legs, did my best to camouflage myself in clothes that could be considered almost normal, you courted controversy. You waltzed down George Street in whatever had tumbled from your dressing-up box of a wardrobe that morning. You revelled in the attention, the disapproval, snorting with laughter and sticking your tongue out, with me scurrying red-faced in your wake, all too aware of the invisible leper bell that jangled with each step by dint of association.

  ‘What’s a pariah?’ I asked, fathoming my way through the Bible stories Mrs Bonnett had set us as summer reading.

  You looked up from a battered Plath, took a thoughtful drag on your cigarette, before replying, ‘I am, Dido. I am.’

  But over the years the town had become inured to your more outlandish leanings, and we were tarred, in your eyes, with the tired brush of acceptance, if not absolute assimilation, replaced in their tattle-tales by a transvestite fishmonger called George and a woman with seven children of varying hues. I was relieved, delighted, at this change of affairs. But you, you bristled with unease. I should have known then you would find a way back to purdah.

  It is Christmas Eve. The night of the Trevelyans’ party – going ahead despite the change in circumstances, because Angela has new friends to flourish, the pampered and the preened to impress – and the night Tom and I have chosen to announce, or admit, our affair, on the grounds that, if Angela is pissed off, she’s less likely to say so in public.

  Harry knows something is going on, has asked me countless times what happened in Hull. Did we? Am I? But I brush her off, tell her it’s complicated, that she should talk to Tom, until, exasperated, she stamps off to see Simon, the Perse boy with the penis.

  If you know about Tom and me, if you believe what you blurted out, Bordeaux-drunk, the night I came home, you don’t let on, or don’t care. Your own life is drama enough, it seems, corralling you in the attic with your charcoals and paint, though on the few occasions I have bothered to venture up – to offer tea, toast, television specials – I can see little evidence of art, just a muddle of half-finished sketches and abandoned gouache, and you on your back on the day bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, waiting, you say, for inspiration to strike.

  Or the phone to ring.

  I should talk to you. Or at least call Toni. But I am seventeen and in love and so the world turns for me now. Wherever I walk is centre stage, the spotlight tracking me and a glitterball dappling me with diamonds. This is so much more than I felt with Jimmy, so much more even than I imagined from the brash Danielle Steels I have hoc
ked from Harry or the dusty du Mauriers that line my own ever-expanding shelves. As I look at myself in the mirror, a debutante flushed with anticipation and advocaat, I see, finally, a story-worthy heroine staring back: a Bennet girl, a Becky Sharp, a Bright Young Thing.

  You are sitting at the kitchen table with a packet of cigarettes, a book you are pretending to care about, and an almost empty bottle of red; a disappearing act I suspect is all your own work, and all tonight.

  I fidget in the doorway, high on stolen Chanel and my own impatience. ‘Are you coming?’ I ask, more as a cursory attempt at politeness than an actual invitation.

  You look up from the same page you were on when I went to change two hours ago. ‘I don’t think so,’ you say.

  This is before the age of the two-a-penny whatever, but the noise I make in reply carries the same contemptuous dismissal, and hits just as hard. Something – pain, pride, even – flickers across your face and I feel a rush of guilt as sobering as caffeine. ‘See you later, then,’ I add, my voice tinged with what I hope is hope.

  You nod. ‘Later, yes.’ Then add, ‘Have fun.’

  I wait for the Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do that has always followed, to which my reply, albeit silent, has always been, could only be: ‘Well, all that leaves is murder.’ But instead what I get is the click, suck sound of another cigarette being lit, and the glug of Malbec into a greasy tumbler.

  I write a mental note to make it up to you tomorrow, because I am already sure you will be long asleep by the time I stagger back. Then I close the door on your weird little world, and dance down the brambled garden path and through the wooden gate to Wonderland.

  The house is full, fuller than I had imagined; the dining room and lounge a who’s who of the self-appointed great and good of this parochial paradise, and around them a pecking flock in peacock colours. All hairbands and shoulder pads and sugar-free smiles; able to recite the calorie content of Waitrose ready meals as well as they can the Lord’s Prayer. I search among them for a mop of hair that grows below a collar line, for a shirt that isn’t button-down or pinstriped, but come up empty-handed.