But he makes an effort to keep in touch, to be concerned. “You okay?”
“I . . . ah, don’t know. I think I’m getting a migraine.”
“Shit . . . you think so?”
And, as it happens, I do. My left cheek is already drumming with the usual foreplay: as if a large hand, gloved in chain mail, is tapping and tapping at me, the glitter of metal catching in my eye and turning to colours and numbness. Soon that familiar, thin, kaleidoscope twist will be rain-bowing in across everywhere I look. And then I’ll get the blind spot. And then I’ll get the pain. Pretty much the perfect evening, then.
It’s stress—I never have this unless I’m stressed. If he was drinking, I wouldn’t be stressed. If we were both drinking, I would not be approaching any type of stress. He is such a stupid—
“Anything I can do?”
YES.
I’m trying to make my expression persuasive, something to raise a thirst. “Oh . . . well, maybe another whisky without the additions—I need to relax. Then it’ll go away.”
“You’re tense?”
Even though I’m becoming visually impaired, I can see where that’s going—all the suggestions that we can both make for removing my various tensions—none of them any use to me tonight.
“A little bit tense, yes.”
“Well, I’m sure we could do something about that.”
“Yes . . .” I may cry. He just has to be this cooperative now—it’s like watching a lunatic burn your inheritance—you get to see each note, high denominations, all yours, immeasurably useful, and then—a sour flare and a feather of ash and another inviting piece of your future is permanently gone.
He gets me another whisky and then one of its relatives, and then one of its friends and I should be drunk by now, I should be feeling it, I should—in the absence of other pleasures—be in my house with the whole whisky family, all of us curled up tight around our fine, warm, cask-matured, internal fire. But I’m not. I am entirely sober. I can hear owls snatching mice in the park behind us. I can smell the whole of the day before yesterday. I am beginning to have the awareness of bloody angels—were it not for being blind in the one eye and wanting to rip off my skin with my own teeth and hands, because this is unbearable. My skin is unbearable, it is holding me back, holding me in and the shine of his body is hurting it, turning so intense that I ought to be seeing blisters rise and he’s so far away across the table and talking about I have no idea what—he’s too close to hear, drowned out by the babies crying across the river and long bones knitting in Stirling and people imagining lottery numbers and changing their minds and dreaming, dreaming loud as hand grenades—and why is he so warm when I can’t touch him?
It’s going to take a long, long drive to bring us home. There is also hardly any room inside the car: most of the space having been appropriated by shame.
We were the best-looking people in there, the prize pair, and we were the ones they asked to leave. I was the one they asked to leave.
Frightening the children.
I wasn’t frightening anyone. And if you bring your kids to the dog track, you deserve all they get—the atmosphere of dashed hope and canine hysteria, the passive smoking, the unremitting pitter-pat of all those paws—you should be reported to a social worker for even thinking of taking a young person near that.
I wasn’t behaving badly or in a way to cause anyone fright. I had only gone outside the bar for a little air and I was making cheerful remarks. I was restraining myself in every sense. And then if you think someone’s stolen your keys from you, you will point that out—I mean, who wouldn’t mention that in passing, even if it so happens that you’re mistaken. I didn’t intend that policemen should be called—I made no such demands.
I can only imagine that we were ejected for our own safety—better to put out the law-abiding couple than empty the whole arena of criminal types. That’s what I would suppose.
While we drive away, Robert has wedged in a tape of some Mozarty horn piece, soft enough to talk above, although we are saying nothing.
I am reflecting, not for the first time, that I dislike the kindness of policemen—when they consider you with that weary amusement, as a person not even worthy of arrest.
“Sorry.”
No reply—maybe I didn’t speak out loud, or he didn’t hear me. “Sorry.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, I am.”
“I know you are.”
This is not good. The whole debacle is his fault for not drinking, but I’m going to be blamed.
He won’t want to see me again after this.
“I just . . .” need to be not by myself. Can’t tell him that, though. You can never tell anyone that. “I mean . . .”
“You have a migraine. It’s okay. Let me drive now, take you home.”
I am not aware that I’m going to sleep. Mainly I have that surgical chill in my ribs—the one which indicates an amputation of your hope. Still, I do slide away, the coloured lights that mark out the sides of the motorway streaming past in a regular, soothing swim. I do leave myself.
What wakes me is a lack of motion. We are hours away, returned to our own city, down by the river, and able to enjoy the stretches and clusters of small-town street-lights on the other side, the soft blanks of dark that indicate woods or fields and a solitary push of headlights—another car that’s out late, like ours.
Although our engine is off, I realise, and we are no longer shining. Robert’s car is parked in the dead stretch of road by the hot-snacks Portakabin—a purveyor of hot snacks has always been here, it seems, overlooking the embankment from various vans and now this. I have never been moved to sample any snacks they have made hot. Not that the place isn’t thronged, when open, and no doubt sterling in many ways—I just try to watch what I eat.
Other things by the river have changed. When I was still at school, people could pull up right along here and birdwatch, or fish, or step out and walk—or wait until night and arrive in couples, take it from there—this last, very probably why such access has now been limited by a number of preventative tree plantations and other civic works. During the hours of daylight, my family would often stroll about here, counting seabirds, trying to spot any low-tide seals on the sandbanks: Simon and I pondering the warning notices and grubby life-saving equipment wistfully—we didn’t exactly want anyone to start drowning, but it would have been fun if somebody almost did, if we ourselves could throw the lifebelt and see them catch it, that first grateful clasp.
“Hello.” Two of Robert’s fingertips running quietly along my jaw. “How are you feeling?”
And I’m feeling my mind is still floundering up for the surface while the rest of me, the meat, is striking off in its own direction over-quickly and I’m already holding Robert, even though I’ve made no conscious effort to reach out. My head winces when I move it too quickly, swims as I’m angled further and further back and his lips are open before mine, determined, coaxing, and he smells of the dog-track bar and of pine-tree air freshener and of his sweat and of himself and his tongue is finding the sourness in my mouth which makes me embarrassed, but it seems Robert doesn’t mind.
“Mm-hmm.” He agrees with the kiss and continues it, our noise first amplifying, then mutating until it’s like wet flesh dropping, slapping on a floor: there is almost a flavour of that along his teeth, of a butchered something, a wound, and I have expressly imagined holding him and all of the conversation, the testing, the pressure we would make against each other which is so very, very much a fine thing now it’s happening, but there is also a slope to it which is unsettling and sly and I feel sick—and he ought to be able to tell this, he is close enough—only no one is stopping anything, we are both going on, and I realise what I’m up to as my head falls forward and his one hand cradles in at the back of my neck: creeps on it, tender and stroking and spending time with my hair while I understand it’s just pretending, biding its time until everything is in place—what it really wants to do is
hold me and push down.
So then it does.
His heat lifting to my face before I find him and then he’s in, a bright taste to him, like metal, and as smooth as innocence and this is better; much, much better, and I know that he is beautiful, this much of him is beautiful, although I’ve seen nothing at all. But now his two hands are over my ears and he smells sweet, confectionary sweet, and he’s making this further and faster and blocking my breath and I want to keep from gagging and want the kick in my head to stop and I want to love him and I want to stop this and I want to be able to watch what I eat and I want to use my teeth.
Except that he’s caught then, holds his breath, clings on to save his life and gives it up and gives it up and gives it up.
“Sorry.” His voice seems rounder, deeper, altered.
I can’t speak yet, the blood is stinging in my scalp. I shouldn’t have sat up so quickly. He feels for my wrist and holds it. I can’t stop swallowing.
“I said I’m sorry. Taking advantage.”
It isn’t him, I don’t feel sick because of him. Still, I do wretch in a small way and try to make it sound like a cough. “It’s okay . . . I was . . . joining in.”
“Thank you.”
“No . . . that’s . . . Thank you.”
I don’t drink men often, hardly at all, it isn’t a habit. This is the first time I’ve done it and wanted to. I think I wanted to.
He smoothes my hair, this time without ulterior motives. “God . . . I shouldn’t have done that, it was . . . great, but . . . you never got to . . .”
The car shivers, or my face, my skull: something is shivering. “No, I never did. It’s okay, though. I had fun.” My hands are wet, getting wetter, the fingernails feel loose. “You have a very nice, ahm . . .”
“Well, it’s fond of you, too. Very. Look, I really would like to . . . but I . . . at the moment.”
“I know. We will. Just not now. We can meet up again.” I have to lie down and I have to lie down without him. I have to go home. I believe we will never see each other again and perhaps if we do something more tonight, this morning, we might change that, but I have to go home and lie down. I have to take care of my hands, they seem to be decomposing.
“Where d’you live, darling?” Then the nervous laugh again, because if he’s calling me darling, he should already know my address, and because darling seems natural now and won’t tomorrow, won’t in an hour. “Where do you live?”
“Go straight on from here. I’ll show you.”
While he drives, I keep my fingers tucked under my thighs and I swallow as slowly as I can and think of my throat as numb pipe, all calm.
In the passing lamp flares Robert appears newly washed, younger, someone that I should stay and be kind with, if it weren’t for the swirling behind my face and my slack palms and the rest. I’m at fault and he is, too—he didn’t drink and so I didn’t drink enough, didn’t dose things appropriately, and so none of this has happened as it should.
Beyond him, there is the river, pulling away as we climb, every swing of the car magnifying, momentum and inertia straining through me the way that they might in a dream.
And I did dream of the river—over and over, when I was five or six. There I would be, awake in my bed, and then the house would start to sway. The movement was quite gentle, almost as if the building had given a sigh, but immediately I’d be terrified.
I would get up and walk to the window, all my joints gearing oddly because of the fear, and the water would be waiting for me, immeasurably wide and with the dull shine of new lead. Always, there was a full moon, disinterested and obscenely wide, and, straight ahead, there was the rope.
It was huge, thicker than the broadest mooring rope, strand after fat strand woven into it seamlessly. I couldn’t see, but I somehow knew that it had been bound clear round the house and fixed inescapably. When I first approached, it was in a lazy sag and still. Then it sprang taut with a low hum, water starting up from it in a long, fine haze of moonlit spray, and my home moved slightly, before the rope settled and eased again.
This process repeated until I was so scared that I imagined I would die soon and leaning so hard against the window that it gave in the way toffee might and bowed out into a bubble around me, let me lean so that I could study the huge knot that had me and my mother and father and brother trapped. I was certain they wouldn’t wake, because this was only for me—my fear.
With that knowledge came the final bracing of the rope, its last rise of spindrift, and then my home was sliding, slithering down towards the embankment and the waves, the other buildings in our street and the streets beyond it shrugging out of our way and then returning to their places as if they had never been friends with our house and didn’t care. The wave tops and the hawser shone and I began to be able to hear the swell over the sandbanks and it would be soon now—when we either sank at the end of our noose, or were dragged away forever and lost.
I would wake up with that swaying and sliding still at work in my legs, my spine. I sometimes think this is why I am naturally unsteady and I need to be off balance to set myself right.
That time with Robert, I wasn’t set right. Another 400 millilitres, maybe less, that would have been the modest help I needed, it would have meant Robert didn’t simply drive me to my flat and let me out with a soft, short kiss.
“Thank you.” My voice tiny, transparent.
“Thank you.”
I balanced on the pavement, sucked in the cool dawn.
“Hannah? I’ll call you this afternoon to find out how you are.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know that, but I will. Because I want to. And once I’ve made my mind up—well, you can’t shake me. You’ll see—I’ll be the cross you have to bear.”
Which meant we parted with a lie.
III
But as long as I’m making progress, that’s the thing. And, like everyone else, I do—racking up the days, night after morning, I am achieving time. Which is a modest accomplishment, I know, but I don’t take it for granted.
Because I was born with the absolute certainty that I would die before leaving thirty. I arrived with ten toes and blue eyes and death firmly in mind. I passed the age when lives should be taken in hand, knowing that no such formalities would be required. For me, there would be no pension, no insurance, no prudent mortgage plan, no fretting over outrages in homes for the elderly, or the ultimate loss of my health and faculties. I was carefree.
And completely wrong, of course.
As of now, I should be six years, eight months and a few days dead. In reality, it looks not unlikely that I’ll make forty in due course.
But this is largely good news: for instance, by trusting in what has become a false goal I’ve still generated an undoubted onward drive and saved myself much useless introspection and unease. I have reached my current position in spite—or even because—of my steadfast denials that I ever could. And my very reasonable unwillingness to bother planning activities beyond my predicted demise has allowed my current lifestyle to excel in improvisation and has encouraged many happy accidents.
I first meet Robert, after all, when I am already years overdue for the grave. Seeing him again, beginning to learn his hands, spending the whole of the following day with the taste of him under my teeth—this also happens totally by chance.
For three weeks after that, of course, he doesn’t phone and nor do I, not having his number—or, indeed, the necessary lack of pride to make the call.
And, right now, I’m thinking of Robert and his failings—or possibly mine. I am wondering why it was so easy to be comfortable and friendly when he finally did call, why the two of us decided three weeks could be nothing at all. Meanwhile, I am rolling quickly, irresistibly, close to forty and speeding across the flanks of my present day. I am also standing very still in the doorway of a barn, dizzied with remembered time, the smothering in of my past.
Beyond the lintel’s shade, there is the sweetnes
s of grain fields on the breeze, the bland dust of poor soil, baked to a yellowish crust: and salt, too: something of the high-tide line, bladderwrack and rock clefts dank with scrub and gorse: that slightly human, musty fug of heated gorse, the snap of its seeds, the blood drop in the yellow of each flower: which is to say, the smell and taste and everything of my being a child in summer, of running between the blue, narrow shore and the racing depths of barley with my brother until the sun had fallen and the sandy earth was cooled to match the temperature of skin.
I used to be young here. This is where days and days of me were played out harmlessly.
But back to business.
There always will be something to interrupt.
I clear my throat and blink and become what is now expected— an adult selling cardboard to another adult—what a life. “How many, then?”
“Eh?”
I hate farmers. “How many do you want?” Especially this farmer.
“Eh?”
No, what I hate are soft-fruit farmers who order a piss-poor handful of 6lb pick-your-own baskets and then lapse into fainting fits and vapours when trails of hapless civilians use, wreck, steal and otherwise outstrip available supplies.
The baskets are for people to put fruit in—so fruit is going to be put in them by people—that’s what all your badly spelled, half-arsed, “Come and Meet the Strawberries and Then Eat Their Children” roadside placards are enticing them to do—what did you expect? That they’d bring their own sodding baskets? That they’d hand-plait wicker trugs the night before to save you expense? That they’d fill up their hats and trouser pockets and then go?
“How many more, Mr. Campbell?” We’re near the start of the raspberry canes—which are already heaving with mums and dads and kiddies, plucking down enough fruit to keep Dante’s inferno endlessly boiling with lakes of crimson jam. “I mean, you’ve got what . . . two more weeks like this . . . ? the currants . . . blackberries . . . you know how long they’ll last . . .”
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