She replies almost too quickly: “Of course! You enjoy yourself! Here …” She fumbles around on the floor for her bag, her purse, and takes out a fifty-pound note—a fifty-pound note! Saints alive!—and hands it to me. “Get you and your friend a bottle of something nice on me.”
I sniff and take the money. “Thank you.” Then a voice pops out before I can stop it. “Will you be here when I get back?”
“Of course I’ll be here! I’m not going until the morning, remember?”
I nod. I stand there, coddled in this knowledge.
“I took your advice, by the way. I went to see a therapist.”
I look at her. “No way.”
“Way.”
“You said you didn’t believe in therapy. You said you were too old. You said it made people worse.”
“All those things may well be true, but I took your advice.”
“And?”
“It was as I suspected. My mother messed me up but I also owe all my success to her. A poisoned chalice is still a chalice, Jenny.”
“I’ll pass on the poisoned chalice, thanks.”
“Shame you don’t get a choice.”
“Watch me.”
“She asked me about my worst memory.”
“Full-on. No foreplay.”
“I started telling her about the death of my mother, and how I missed it by five minutes.” I look down. “And then I realized that wasn’t it at all. It was finding your suicide note.”
“You can stay a little longer, if you like. If that would be useful to you, I mean.”
“Would it be useful to you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll stay!”
My chest floods with warmth. She hugs me from where she’s sitting and her head is against my stomach. I think about how when she was a fetus in my grandmother’s womb she already had eggs inside her, and one of those eggs would become me. What would become three of us was there, in one body, all at once—like those Droste effect pictures that show a girl reading a book with a picture on the book of a girl reading a book with a picture on the book of a girl reading a book with a picture on the book of a girl …
Mum,
I am sorry to do this at Christmastime, and I know the sight of my body in the bath is going to be a terrible thing to come home from the Bahamas to, I just thought it best to get it out of the way while you were away. I also thought New Year (New Millennium!), New Start—and what better time to have a complete life overhaul than now? Once the funeral’s out of the way, you and Roger can crack on with your chic new life together. I just hope his wife understands. Once you tell her your daughter committed suicide she’s bound to let you off the hook.
As for my reasons, let’s just say I have come to feel desultory about my impending existence, and it’s an attitude that is rather incompatible with life. You know what I can’t tolerate? Consciousness. Specifically this consciousness. I’m hoping you’re wrong about everything and I don’t end up stranded in this consciousness for all eternity except with no body, because my body is the one part of me I actually like, apart from my thighs, and the second teeth on either side of my front teeth, and my shapeless feet and lack of discernible eyelashes and brows.
I read an interesting thing the other day about bees. In a honeybee colony, the queen bee rules while her daughters do nothing but work. They forgo the chance to have offspring of their own, despite being physically capable of producing sons. When the queen dies, the workers find an egg of suitable age and feed it royal jelly, resulting in a royal successor, but sometimes they don’t succeed, leaving the colony queenless. It’s a risk. They give it all up for the good of the hive. Imagine that kind of altruism.
I’m afraid I just don’t have it in me.
So, farewell.
Jenny x
GRANMA SAID
“Oh, it’s you two again, is it?”
“Hi, Granma,” I said. The dayroom was beige and maroon, like her nightgown.
She ignored me. “Where’s my little dog?” she said. She meant Nathaniel (the spaniel).
“Nathaniel’s fine,” my mother said.
This was a lie. The dog was dead.
Granma turned to me as if I were a pleasant stranger in need of advice. She gestured to my mother: “She lies, this one. You’ve got to watch her.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Ever since she started doing all that stuff. I said to them all, I was the one born with a caul, but you don’t see me flaunting myself to the bereaved.”
“I don’t—” my mother began.
I looked around the room. It wasn’t a big room, but it was bigger than her bedroom—I hated it when we had to go and see her in there. The Garibaldi biscuits and Imperial Leather talcum powder—Imperial Leather : in another universe it was a fetish mag for colonialists—all got me asking how I could ever enjoy an evening again. How could anyone?
“As for those cards,” Granma continued, “they used to do it when they were little and I never paid much attention. Eleanor brought some home from a boyfriend one day and a whole troupe of them went up to the loft to use them.”
“That was a Ouija board,” my mother said, fluffing a cushion for no one.
“I heard screaming and went up there and there was a girl with a broken leg lying wailing in the corner.”
“Something broke her leg?” I said.
“No,” my mother said quickly.
“She already had the broken leg when she went up there,” said Granma. “But her crutches had come alive and started hitting her. So they all said, anyway.”
My mother looked down.
“What?” I said. I had never heard this story.
“Still, she made an okay living out of it in the end. Not that I ever saw much of it.” Granma turned to me. “You were supposed to get rich and look after me,” she said. “When are you going to marry a rich man?”
“I am a rich man,” I said, quoting Cher.
“I was in Coronation Street,” my mother said.
“For one episode,” my granma said. “No good at putting yourself forward, that’s why. Expects it all handed to her on a plate. Expects them to come chasing her.”
“I need you to sign something, Mum,” said my mother, and reached into her bag. She pulled out a small stack of stapled papers.
I looked at a woman sitting in a chair opposite. She was holding a baby doll and trying to feed it from a small plastic bottle. The doll didn’t want to drink from the bottle, so the woman started rocking it instead.
I heard Granma say, “Forget what you need. There’s something I need to say to you, Carmen. Something I need to ask you.”
I turned around and looked at her, and for a second it was like she was the old Granma there—lucid as you like. Eyes that could split light.
My mother put the papers on the tray table and looked at Granma expectantly. “What?”
There was the sudden, unmistakable stench of hot piss. My mother sat back. None of us looked at each other. I put my hand on Granma’s back. Her spine felt like the end of an escalator, vertebrae rippling under rubber. She gripped her stick. “I forgot.”
After a minute or so had passed, my mother placed the papers gently on the side table. “You need to sign this so that we can sort the money to pay for this place.”
Granma looked at the form. “I’ll have the lamb.”
“No,” my mother said, “it’s not a menu. It’s something for you to sign, about money.”
“Lamb,” Granma said, “just put lamb. You’re getting on my nerves now.”
My mother handed her the pen. “You need to sign it, Mum. Here.” She pointed with her finger.
Granma took the pen and diligently wrote the word Lamb in the signature box.
“Oh no, that’s not right!” My mother snatched up the form. “Your name’s not Lamb, is it? I’ll have to get another form.”
Lamb’s eyes were big and frightened behind her glasses.
“It’s ok
ay,” said my mother. “We’ll sort it.”
There was a tone in my mother’s voice that made me feel sick with hope.
ALL MY CIRCUS, ALL MY MONKEYS
I meet Nicolette at eight in the cheap pub near Goodge Street with the stained-glass windows and stained upholstery to match. I’m wearing a Nostromo T-shirt and an amber necklace. It’s an outfit that I think suggests a rich internal life. My hair is done but not too done, and my black denim skirt is short enough to suggest tasteful but empowering nudity.
Nicolette arrives in a bad mood.
“What news from town, sister?” I cry.
“I’ve cracked my screen again,” she rages.
“Oh. Here, have some awful wine.”
“Thanks. Oh, it’s even more awful than usual. I almost want to congratulate them behind the bar.”
“It’s just so cheap, you can’t argue.”
“You really can’t. I also think something about it pleases me when the rest of my life is relatively tasteful.”
Nicolette puts her phone on the table. It is indeed very cracked.
“What happened?”
“Mood malfunction.”
“Ah.”
“So that’s sixty quid even with insurance.”
I sigh. “I have my own courtesy-phone debacle to deal with right now. Look. The fact that we have to pay for all these devices is in itself outrageous. It’s like a modern version of the window tax.”
“Oh my God, that’s EXACTLY what it is. Charging me for my windows on the fucking world!”
This is how we have these times together. We drink and we riff in our own little echo chamber. We’ve even started calling it the Prosecco Chamber. Gross, right? But here we are. I know that Nicolette has had as sheltered a life as me, devoid of any real hardship, which is depressing, although it does make the whole thing easier to work with.
I drink more wine and gag.
“So, how are you?” Nicolette says. “I keep seeing his stupid photos everywhere.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“No, I mean it. They’re everywhere.”
“I meant the stupid bit.”
“Oh.”
“You’re a pal.”
“So, how are you?”
“Pretty awful. I got fired, had a fight with my oldest friend because she objected to me leaving her grown-up child in the street, and worst of all Art’s seeing a woman I’m obsessed with online.”
Nicolette makes a sound like a human balloon withering, and I am just so elated and relieved that someone finally gets the enormity of this. I put my hand on her arm. “Thank you, Nicolette, for making that awful sound.”
She makes it again. I thank her again. “So in answer to your question, all I can say with any surety is that I am … continuing.”
“Well, that’s something,” says Nicolette. “I’m going round in circles. Or maybe it’s a vortex, spiraling slowly inward to its inevitable own obliteration. On my way here I walked past a place called Highcroft Mews and I had a flash of my future: gated suburban blocks of identical houses, clipped bushes, jet-washed brick. I thought to myself, Someday I’m going to have an affair with someone who lives in a place like this. We’ll share average bottles of wine and only fuck drunk. And the worst thing is, it’ll feel like a break from the old routine.”
“You’re not even married.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve always known that a dire, depressing affair is my ultimate fate. Much more than the marriage part.”
She goes to the bar. When she gets back I start telling a story about someone who says I’m back in town! at the point of orgasm. As I’m telling the story it dawns on me that it’s actually her story I’m telling back to her. Fuck. This has happened to me before. Sometimes it’s harder to backpedal than other times. I wonder whether I’ve got the sympathetic bias right. I’m telling it from the point of view of taking the piss out of the person who says I’m back in town. It’s so hard to be spontaneous and thoughtful at the same time. This is why you’re generally better off staying in and watching TV or interacting safely on the Internet behind a semi-affected persona. The outside world demands too much reality. And I find reality stressful in the extreme. Reality doesn’t give a person enough thinking time. It renders one ill-prepared. For a moment, I’m fucked. I pull things round by telling her an embarrassing thing I once said after an orgasm: Mmm, that’s welcome! If in doubt, self-denigrate.
“I know a story like that,” Nicolette says. She looks confused. “What am I going to do about my phone? It’s the fourth one this year. Did you know fifteen percent of phone users in the UK are operating with a cracked screen?”
“I believe it.”
“It’s like they DESIGNED it to be painful, difficult, and expensive. A glass phone! Fucking larks.”
We drink through the pain.
* * *
Hours later, we are in a private members’ bar. Everyone loves a private members’ bar until they’re in one. I’ve been to the toilet twice to take cocaine and I think everyone in here is highly aware of this fact, particularly the pianist. I also possibly have a nosebleed, or a runny nose, one of the two. I feel genuinely fantastic. We have had a bottle of expensive wine because this is the kind of place that sells nothing else—a rash proposition when I am literally sinking into debt. Fuck it! We have thus far put three pictures each on Instagram, and one video of us flossing with a doorman.
“Let’s promise not to regret these and delete them tomorrow,” Nicolette says. “It’s always such a giveaway when people do that. Let’s OWN the social media fallout.”
“Agreed.”
The wine slides down my throat. It is cocaine’s throat now. It is cocaine’s world.
“What did you fight about with your old friend?” says Nicolette.
“Kelly?”
“I haven’t met Kelly, have I?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“I know who she is, though. I saw a picture of her online—she left a funny comment on a picture of yours, so I clicked through.”
“Hm, yes, she does that.”
“She looks quite moody in her pictures. I’m generally scared of women with big fringes. They always seem more noble or judgmental, or both. She seems to wear a lot of dungarees and Breton tops.”
“She does love a Breton top.”
“What did you fall out about?”
“It’s too involved to go into at this stage. But I think she might be leaving me.”
“Leaving you?”
“And London. The whole shebang.”
“God, I can’t imagine leaving London. I am going to live in the city forever. I feel as though the capital is the perfect place to continue my studies of love and life. So many hearts, lost and hunting.”
“What’s going on in your dating life?”
“Oh, it’s a ride, for sure. You’ll have to get on this! I’m thinking of changing my Tinder profile to men and women.”
“Why?”
“I’m sick of the men. I am increasingly sick of men.”
“Such an extreme response, though, for a heterosexual.”
“I might not be a heterosexual.”
“Not even a sex tourist; a sexuality tourist.”
“What’s wrong with tourism? Tourism is how you find out whether you want to emigrate.”
* * *
The next time I take stock of my whereabouts, I am in the smoking area of the same bar—a tiny New York–style black-iron fire escape with a few ferns waving from the landings. Six or seven of Nicolette’s media friends are with us. I cannot remember a single one of their names, but I am enjoying telling them what I think about everything very much, and in that way they are my most treasured audience to date. I also find I have acquired new and abundant knowledge on matters such as globalism, juvenile correctional facilities, and the output of Radio 4. Someone asks me whether I am familiar with the work of Rembrandt. I say: “Was he the one who wrote the theme tune to Fr
iends?” No one laughs. I fear this is because few of them are familiar with the work of Friends.
* * *
Two hours later. Where am I now? A flat. There is music on—“Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes—and most people are dancing, apart from me and one man, who is bald and talking to me by a small marble side table covered in drug detritus. I suppose I am trying my best to look very, very infertile. I feel like Frankenstein—nose stuck to my head, leg in my armpit. It is dark, but—oh God, is that daylight outside the window? No, it’s just reflected light, thank Christ—there is a piece of neon on the wall opposite that says CRYWANK in Tracey Emin font, bright pink. The bald man is called Konrad, I think, I think, but it doesn’t matter because his current raison d’être is telling me why this is his favorite song ever and why he has chosen to put it on. It seems there is no end to his reason but really I can’t wait for him to shut the fuck up so I can start telling him about MY favorite song, which is actually from this century. I nod, encouraging him—to finish and shut the fuck up. He goes on, and then it slips out at one point that he works as a hospital porter.
“I don’t judge you for that,” I say. Mainly just to infiltrate the monologue.
“No,” he says, “why would you?”
I say: “Some of the most intelligent people I’ve known have worked as porters.” Is this true? Who cares!
“I’m from Poland originally,” he says.
“What’s that brilliant fucking phrase,” I say, grasping for it, holding the conch—he looks annoyed as he tosses his head and says with me: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I really fucking hate that phrase.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Why do we not want to look after each other anymore? My grandmother, who was a woman who taught me everything I know, said: It’s all my circus and all my monkeys. And I think we’ve really got to band together and sort out these monkeys because, man, these monkeys are everywhere. When did loving other people more than yourself start to become such a bad thing? All this ‘self-care’ bullshit is just about buying things. It’s because society has let you down and you’re burned out, so you’re going to throw money at the problem and reinforce the very thing destroying you.”
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