by Jemma Wayne
Simone
Dominic is late.
Terry has been home for hours.
As soon as Dominic opens the door, Simone notices him noticing this – Terry’s presence. It is tangible today, viscous. Terry has not yet looked up. The TV is blaring as usual. For a moment, Dominic glances back towards the hallway and Simone wonders if he is going to slip back out into the flower-boxed street, while he is still able. But he shuts the door silently and remains inside, his eyes searching as always for his sister. Jasmine is sitting on the carpet of the living room playing with her princesses. Wearing only a nappy and a t-shirt, her face is smudged with some kind of snack and she sings unintelligible words to the plastic figures in her hand, softly, as though she is soothing them. She has learnt this melody from Dominic, who despite his increasingly teenage demeanour, continues to dote on her. And watch over her. And shield her, when he can. Dominic takes a step towards her now and the floor creaks. Jasmine whips her head around, shrieking with delight at the sight of her brother. He smiles and stretches out his arms. She leaps up. But before she can get close, Terry turns.
Despite his own shortcomings in size, Terry is far bigger than Dominic, so when he stands square in front of him, when he lifts Dominic’s chin in his palm, and when he lowers his face close to Dominic’s ear, it looks threatening.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
Dominic coughs as the smoke on Terry’s breath engulfs him. “Nowhere.”
Like a bullet rebounding, Terry slaps the back of his head.
“I was just with Jakub. In the park,” Dominic corrects quickly. “Weren’t doing anything, I meant.”
“That stinking Pole? You still mates with him?”
Dominic dares a glance at his mother. He’s looking for help. But she doesn’t like Jakub either. His mother is only a cleaner, but Dominic used to regale Simone with descriptions of how she sets Jakub extra homework, and teaches him piano, and sews his clothes, and how they have a bowl on their kitchen table always teeming with fruit. Jakub is Dominic’s best friend and she knows he goes to his house, despite her disdain, pretending to be elsewhere. He doesn’t invite Jakub back to theirs.
“Leave him,” Simone tells Terry gently.
“Gotta be careful with Poles,” Terry says. “Only gonna shaft you. You see them, don’t you, Dom? In collaboration with the capitalists? Working cheap, ten to a flat, sending the money out of England, making it so that we, the English, we can’t get a proper wage, feeding the fools at the top, just like they planned it. Hand in hand, aren’t they? You best be careful with your Polak.”
Dominic doesn’t answer. He stands with his shoulders hunched, making himself even smaller.
“You’re meant to be home anyway, aren’t you? It’s your day to do laundry. See, he’s already steering you wrong, that Polak.”
“Sorry,” Dominic says now in dangerous monotone. He goes to the bedrooms where he gathers clothes from the floor and the wash baskets and brings them back to the kitchen where the washing machine is and where Terry is waiting. Carefully he sorts the clothes, and loads a pile of light-coloured items into the machine. Simone is making dinner a few feet away and attempts to stroke him on the back as he passes her. He responds with a small smile, an attempt at assurance, Don’t worry Mum, but she should have known better, she should have left him. Terry is still watching.
“Know where this dense cow’s been today?” Terry asks him suddenly, looming over the kitchen counter. “Know where? Ask her, go on, ask her!”
Dominic glances fearfully now at his mother. The panic in his eyes is sudden and clear, and she knows why – he thinks she’s told Terry about the meeting at school. He thinks she’s betrayed him.
“Where’ve you been, Mum?” Dominic asks, his voice quiet, trembling.
Terry prods her, laughing. “Go on, tell him, tell him.”
“I started my job,” she says, almost as quietly as her son.
“In a fancy blazer no less, didn’t she, for a gym. Ooh, look at Miss Hoity Toity. Bet that’s what you wanted them to think, didn’t you? That you’re something special? Eh?”
Terry begins to prance around the room in a crude imitation of her. She gives a forced laugh, and Dominic does too, his panic retreating just a little.
“Yeh, well, I learnt my lesson, I’ll wear a tracksuit next time. It was a bit much.”
“Fucking ’course it was, dense cow,” Terry bellows. “That’s what they want though, don’t they. All these twats round here. Come join our dim-witted dance into oblivion. You ever seen anything so contrived? How easily manipulated do they think we are? Stuff us in holes and put bright lights around us, and we’re gonna think our dark pit’s gonna get some of that brightness? Yeh right. Whose plan was that anyway? Bloody Zionist bankers probably. Think they can control us. Think we don’t notice, but I do, don’t I? Don’t I?”
Simone is not sure which of them this question is directed at. She dares to look away from Terry towards her son. Dominic may be off the hook about school, but he is still standing as motionless as he can, his eyes fixed on the older man, nodding whenever he pauses. Simone’s breath relaxes a little. So long as they both stay listening, stay respectful, Terry’s rant will run itself out. Minutes tick by to the beat of the whirring washing machine behind them. Every now and then there’s a pause, and Simone and Dominic nod, before Terry carries on unabated, ignoring Jasmine’s sporadic bursts into the kitchen area, which are warded off by Dominic passing her a Kit Kat. Simone tries hard, but she can’t quite follow Terry’s jumbled tirade. He’s jumping from one subject to another, too fast for her so that it’s impossible to follow the connections. There are frequent references to Toffs and Dirty Politicians and Jews and Fucking Primrose Twats, but she loses the thread of it. At one point there’s something about 9/11 and the banking crash and how they’re related, but she doesn’t catch on to that either. Terry is talking at speed and loudly. There are few breaths. He’s sat himself on a chair at the counter, but neither Simone nor Dominic dare to move. Her legs begin to stiffen. She sees Dominic’s shoulders tightly raised. Now Terry asks Dominic something. What has he asked? Simone wasn’t listening. Dominic glances at her, his eyes bright again with terror, but she can’t help her son. Her own stomach contracts. She can see Dom’s shoulders trembling. What has Terry asked?
“Do you think so?” Terry repeats, to Dominic.
Is he supposed to say yes, or no? Simone has no answer to mouth him.
“Well?”
“I dunno,” Dominic answers finally, quietly, head bowed but eyes still dutifully fixed on the larger man. “Sorry.”
There is a pause. A brief silence amid the thunder. Terry is staring at Dominic. He is close enough to hit him. Simone thinks he is about to. Not the face, she pleads internally. Not his face. But, suddenly, Terry laughs. “You’re as dense as your dense mother.”
Dominic says nothing. He keeps his head low.
Terry laughs again, this time louder. Then he leans over the counter and flicks his fingers sharply on Dominic’s forehead. One, swift, ping.
Is that it? At the silliness of this gesture, it is all Simone can do not to laugh herself. Is that it? She thinks so. Terry is beginning to return to the sofa. It’s over. It’s over.
Then, however, the washing machine beeps. And once again, Terry turns.
Now, he watches Dominic take out the wet clothes. He’s waiting for a mistake, Simone can feel it, it’s not over at all, he’s gunning for a fight. There’s a drying rack behind the door and Dominic’s meant to put a towel underneath it to catch drips. He remembers, thank God, he sets it up carefully, making sure to shake out each item to minimise creases, painstakingly ensuring there is breathing space between them; but suddenly, Terry rounds the kitchen counter and thuds him sharply in the small of his back.
“Where’re my things then?” Terry is demanding, shouting. “Are yours more important?”
Dominic has had the wind knocked out of him, and between strained
breaths, Simone sees him looking frantically at the clothes on the rack. They are a mixture of his school shirts and Jasmine’s dresses and some underwear of her own. He has clearly sorted them by colour, just as she would. Terry’s jeans and other stuff are in the pile of dark items he has not yet washed.
“I was just starting with the light stuff,” Dominic says, inhaling sharply. “I’m doing yours now.”
Immediately he turns to the dark pile on the floor and loads it into the machine, but Terry has already begun rummaging in a drawer behind him. Dominic turns. In his hand, Terry has a pair of scissors, the kitchen sort, large, sharp. Instinctively, Dominic puts his arms in front of his face.
“Tel,” Simone intervenes quietly, but he shoos her away.
“Give me your clothes,” he instructs Dominic.
Confused, Dominic lowers his arms and hands him the wet shirts he has just hung.
“You’ve got to respect your elders,” Terry says, shaking his head. “You’ve gotta learn that, Dom. Don’t forget who pays for your clothes, who pays for everything, who sorts out everything round here.” He cuts through one shirt, and then the other. “Get the rest,” Terry tells him.
It takes a while for Dominic to understand, but Terry explains it for him. He marches Dominic into his bedroom and one by one slashes every item of clothing he owns.
It is three hours later that people start arriving. It’s not late, only around eight-thirty, but Dominic has been in his room since Terry left him there and the dinner Simone had been cooking never got served. She’s left it on top of the kitchen counter, but she doesn’t dare move from Terry, who is now all over her. Simone can hear Jasmine crying in her cot – she must be hungry, but Terry won’t like it if she sees to the baby instead of him. Simone’s only hope is that Dominic will go to her.
Things were worse for Dominic when he was a baby. Simone comforts herself with this often. At least Jasmine has a brother. At least Jasmine’s dad is around, alive. At least Jasmine gets cooked for, usually, something she can’t remember ever doing when Dominic was little. And at least this abandonment to her cot isn’t regular. Dominic used to get left for hours when he was that age, if she had a friend round who’d brought some charlie. Simone winces when she thinks of that. Yes, in many ways, Jasmine has it easy.
The crying continues. There is a wrenching, wretched sorrow to it.
“Come sit with me,” calls Terry.
The room is rowdy now and Terry is at the centre. Simone perches on one side of his chair, accepting the joint he passes her. Beneath the fog of that, and the din of music, and the chatter of the people, Jasmine’s sobs are softened. Simone forces herself, or allows herself, to focus on the crowd. There are nine or ten people in all, friends from the estate, and Terry is magnetic amongst them. He is holding court. Refuelling. Simone laughs at something he says. He kisses her smack on the cheek. Somebody passes her a beer. She feels herself relaxing.
Until suddenly, in her periphery, she catches sight of Dominic darting into the kitchen at the far end of the open plan living area. He doesn’t know that he has been seen and grabs a few slices of bread and a chunk of cheese. He is like a mouse, scurrying close to the floor. With a sharp knife he starts cutting the food into edible pieces, then Simone notices him spy the baked potatoes she cooked earlier. Body still lowered behind the counter, he reaches for one and hurriedly slices this too. Then all at once there is a clatter. Simone looks to Terry with apprehension, but he hasn’t clocked. The group have broken into song, and Terry’s voice rises at the top of it. Dominic peers silently over the counter and sees Simone watching him. He lifts his hand. There is a trail of blood running from his finger down his arm. Simone tries with her eyes to ask him if he’s okay, but he doesn’t respond. He slips a dirty tea towel off the counter and wraps it around the blood. Then he looks at her, waiting.
Terry’s hand is on her thigh. She doesn’t move. Instead, she nods at Dominic again. But he merely waits. Silently. Testingly? She starts to feel agitated. She nods again, more firmly. And again. Until finally, he nods back. “Jasmine,” she mouths to him now. Still he doesn’t answer. Still he waits. And she waits. But eventually, he does slip silently away. A few minutes later, the sound of Jasmine’s wailing ceases.
An hour after that, Simone hears a piercing scream. It sounds distinctly like Dominic. For a moment, her body tenses, air slicing her lungs like the knife sliced his finger, but then she realises that the shout hasn’t come from his room at all, or from Jasmine’s. She strains her ears through the music and when the noise comes again, she realises that the scream is not even within their flat, but coming from outside, and growing quieter as it moves away. Just somebody stupid, or drunk, like them, running in defiance down the civilised street.
Simone accepts another joint and slides her hand beneath Terry’s t-shirt. He squeezes her round the waist, and she listens as he regales the room with another story that lifts them high into the night.
Veronica
It slipped like loose thread. Time. Memory. The blurred edges of reality. Veronica had been sat at the table for over an hour, twenty accounts of favourite hobbies spread out before her, not one read or corrected. From the house next door, music was pumping even beyond the usual decibel, and voices were raised – Terry’s in its loutish tenor discernible amongst the multitude. Thank goodness the crying of the baby had stopped. Toddler, she should say, not baby. When she’d finally seen them all together on the street, Veronica had been surprised by how old the child had turned out to be. She hadn’t considered that a little girl who could most likely talk and move and climb from her crib, would have cause to cry for so long nor so loud. But she did, often, and every sob that seeped through the walls continued to feel like the universe mocking Veronica, reminding her that this disgusting couple had easily, flippantly, manifested the very thing she hadn’t, and couldn’t. Same as Sarah. Sometimes Veronica longed to break through those walls and scoop the child up, and then run with her as far away as she could manage. She didn’t know what would come after that though. It was only this one moment about which she fantasised.
She poured herself another glass of red wine. George was in bed. With earplugs. He’d arrived home just after ten and headed straight up, but Veronica had mumbled excuses about marking and lesson plans, not mentioning Sarah’s surprise, unnerving visit, and remained at the table with her papers and her wine and a new level of relentless itching. It had been three days since she’d told George there was no baby, three days since she’d slept more than an hour at a time, and the dark wakefulness of the bedroom loomed terrifying. All weekend George had tight-roped between apology and cheerfulness, an impossible attempt, she realised, to sympathise with her disappointment, yet not seem too disappointed himself. In return, she accepted sushi and alcohol, and hated him. Hated him for saying nothing, for pretending that the hole inside her and the canyon between them didn’t exist.
Like the baby that wasn’t.
The celebration that wasn’t.
The future that wasn’t.
The marriage that wasn’t.
The friendship that was, once, but no more.
The girl, herself, dancing with eternal pre-teen verve, just beyond articulation.
She could barely remember that girl. Not really. All she could recall was that during those last days at Sarah’s house, she had felt powerful. Is that what they had argued about? She had remembered recently that there was something, something that had caused a rift between them, though she was sure they’d parted happily in the end. After all, that summer was her calm time. Her content time.
Still, there had always been a certain patchwork element to Veronica’s recollections. Sometimes she put this down to the piecemeal chronology of her childhood and whenever she was asked about her youth, it was in this fashion that she deliberately rolled the quilt out for the listener: here was her flat in Holland, there was the market in Oman, here the New York subway, there the handsy English teacher. Described this way,
she sounded worldly and exotic. But the threads that held this variety of pieces together were darned hastily and sometimes they seemed to split inside her. She couldn’t gather them or hold them all at once. She couldn’t order them or pull from them a sense of progression. She could barely even locate herself within them. And so they slipped, untethered threads.
Why did Sarah hate her?
Veronica took a long gulp of her wine and looked out to the street, as though solidity lay somewhere in the lamp-lit throws of prettily painted Primrose. Her mind spun. She had to still it. It had been many years since she’d felt this out of control, and she had to regain it. She’d grown up now. She didn’t want to pilfer. The thought of what she’d been doing to Amelia was sickening.
But resentment burned in the empty space where a baby should be.
No. She’d been enough, once. She had to remember that. She’d been enough, without a baby, without Sarah, just as she was. Of all the misshapen, untied, jumbled memories, that’s what she had to remember and cling on to. She’d been wrong to return to pilfering, wrong to taunt her old friend, wrong to go to the museum, wrong to use Amelia. There was no need to tear at the hem of Sarah’s life just to darn her own. It was far better to be mending, patching, fixing.
She would lay off Amelia. It wasn’t necessary to explain, she would simply find an excuse not to have the meeting.
She would lay off Sarah too – not force the friendship, not force herself to confront her envy.
She would busy herself – with other friends, with her husband, with their new home. Except of course, that as soon as she glanced again to the street and considered their perfect, pastel dwelling, she remembered that, unlike Sarah, she had no family to fill it.
Then, a face appeared at her window.
It was wrong to feel so unnerved by the sight of an eleven-year-old. Veronica realised this at once and was reprimanding herself for it before the thought was even fully formed. But the intensity of Dominic’s beady, too-close eyes had a way of disquieting her even on the street in daylight; and this time, it was not day but night, and he was not innocuous on a public street, but peering through her window, at her. As soon as he saw her see him, he backed away a little, squirreling again, but as he did so she noticed a towel wrapped around his hand, darkened by something she could only presume was blood.