said if i didn’t she’d
give me a bad review
and so … 2/2
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 01:51
she’s not like you
FROM: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 01:52
u still didn’t have to
have sex with her
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 01:53
look we got drunk
she insisted
things escalated.
i made a mistake.
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 01:54
it’s happened to all of
us.
FROM: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 01:54
i guess
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 01:54
look I really
really just want a
chance to explain this
in person?
FROM: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 01:55
y am I still talking to
u it’s almost
2am
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 01:56
yes, why?
makes you wonder
FROM: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 01:57
i just wanted to
figure stuff out
i guess
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 01:58
you know now.
i told you what happened
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 01:59
but you’re still here
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:05
are you still there?
FROM: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:06
yes
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:07
look, I am back
in a week’s time.
do you want to
meet up?
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:10
talk it thru in person?
FROM: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:15
i’m not sure what
that means but
ok
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:15
can I call you?
FROM: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:20
it’s 2:30 in the morning
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:22
not now.
when I’m back.
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:22
i’ll call you when I’m
back, OK?
FROM: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:25
ok
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:26
no reason to hide OK?
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:27
bluebird?
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:28
blue?
i’m coming back soon and
i’m coming for you?
TO: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 02:30
OK?
FROM: RUTH BEADLE
02/07/06 — 07:15
ok
MOISTURIZER
Ruth
Now
What to wear? I need to think about what to wear, the Lolitas urge me. A shopping trip is imminent. In preparation I collate the data I’ve amassed on body types over the years. There are five standards: apple, pear, hourglass, inverted triangle, rectangle. Depending on your choice of secondary reading, you might identify further shapes: the diamond, the lean column, the Corinthian column, the stick man and the fuck doll. It seems reassuring to start with fruit types and basic geometric shapes.
To find out your body shape, stand naturally with your legs together and your arms away from your sides. Examine the area from your underarms, past your bust and ribcage, over your waist and hips, to the fullest part of your thighs. That’s your shape.
In preparation for the big night, the Lolitas take me out to look for an outfit. They are hoping I might be persuaded to update my wardrobe. By now we have begun referring to the hen-do as ‘the big night’. We leave work when it’s still light outside. The March evening is bright and crisp. On the way to the shops I exchange a sorrowful look with a woman in a camel-hair coat, walking two small Chihuahuas. The dogs have diamanté collars, which choke them as the woman drags them by their leads. I am envious of their group dynamic.
When we reach the lingerie shop Bex turns to me. ‘Are you ready?’ she shrieks. I knew this would happen. In preparation, I was nil by mouth for forty-eight hours, with the exception of sweet tea. Yet as we cross the threshold I still feel my stomach turn inwards.
Apple pear rectangle hourglass inverted triangle. No one wants to kiss the spoilsport.
‘OK, how do we do this?’ I say, adopting a practical tone. The Lolitas look at me uncomprehendingly.
‘What do you mean “how do we do this”?’ they say.
They flick through the rows of bras at a mind-boggling speed.
‘Come on, Ruth,’ says Emmy. ‘Don’t you know your size?’
I hesitate. Bex nudges me to browse further along, and my arm darts out to pick up a cream bra with little cupcakes embroidered on it.
Do you wear a larger size on your top half than your bottom? Have wider shoulders than hips? Have a straight ribcage? Then you’re probably an inverted triangle. People will say you look like a swimmer on a good day or ‘androgynous’ on a bad day, which is intended to mean: you look like a man. You should wear straight lines, boat necks, muted colours. Why try?
When we’ve selected enough bras, the Lolitas push me towards the changing rooms, where we are handed butterfly tokens in different colours according to the number of items we are taking in with us. The tokens are different pinkish hues, which seems quite impractical because it’s hard to distinguish between them – as well as rather imprecise on a zoological level (pink butterflies are actually relatively rare). With a gentle shove, Emmy herds us down the corridor and it’s just as well: I shouldn’t try to entertain the concept of realism in a place like this. All the flat surfaces are reflective with glitter: I am blinded. I stumble to a changing room near the back and push through the thick velvet curtain. It is perfectly circular. I am standing in the middle of a minuscule opera theatre. Behind me, the crimson drape drops down to my feet, fringed with gold. The walls are papered with a continuous picture of theatre seats. A spotlight illuminates me from above. I hear the hiss of a hidden dispenser, vaporizing orange blossom fragrance. I lift my head. ‘The world is your stage’ is scrawled above my picture in the mirror. No pressure then.
No pressure to undress. I pull my sweater off, unbutton my shirt, slide my skirt down my legs. Take a deep breath. Cutis anserine is considered the medical name for goose bumps, but actually, it’s a near-exact Latin translation, meaning ‘goose skin’. An alternative medical term is ‘horripilation’. Which is a terrible word. I pinch the cold, moist skin of my underarm. I lift my arms and look at my dry elbows. I should moisturize more often. I never do.
‘Ruth, babe?’ the Lolitas coo from beyond the changing room. ‘How you getting on?’
I am wearing, I suppose, a red satin number. It does, I consider, cover my nipples. I rub my arm. It’ll bruise.
‘All right. I guess.’
There is a rustling and their little heads pop in from each side of the curtain, first the red hair, then the brunette. My arms cross over my chest as I back into the trompe l’oeil.
‘Come on, let us see,’ says Emmy.
‘Fuck’s sake, Emmeline. Stop torturing her,’ says Bex. ‘Oi, Ruth.’ She nods in my direction.
‘Yes.’
‘You know what Miss Phyllis would say?’
‘What would Miss Phyllis say?’
‘Legs for days!’
‘Let us
see! Ruth!’
‘Get the hell out of my changing room, you pair of perverts!’ I’m laughing.
I buy the bra and two sets of coordinated panties – identical bikini briefs. No, not the thong – no, a hundred per cent sure, thank you very much.
In this dream I am lying in a shallow pool of warm water, my elbows resting on the edge of the stone basin. It is a cool day and I am bathing out in the open, like a bird. Water, refracted, distorts my legs into inconsistent sticks, greying away under the surface. I am happy. I have always felt happier in water, I find myself thinking in the dream, though this is something I have never thought of while awake. I can’t stop looking at my graceful legs. They look so long, so so long and then they turn to stone as I watch them.
Miss Phyllis wants to go down to the piano bar. I don’t blame her. It’s lovely weather this morning, but it’s been raining all week and the decking is damp. We absolutely cannot let her out today. It takes nothing for them to get sick and it isn’t worth it. She will forget she’s even been and anyway, she’ll want to go again tomorrow. It’s nearly spring now and spring does strange things to Miss Phyllis. The bluebird in her heart just wants to get out. Something must have happened to her in spring. It makes her think of her only true love, the police constable who broke her heart. We don’t talk about that, though sometimes, on a bright day, I have caught her muttering sweet things into the air, as if in conversation with someone. All afternoon she sits in the old armchair next to the bay window, looking out and refusing to move. We let her be for as long as we can but after an hour we need to move her. The chair isn’t regulation, just decorative, and sitting in it for too long will hurt her back. Alanna kneels next to her to coax her into getting up. It doesn’t work. Miss Phyllis refuses to move. She has fastened her fingers around the wooden knobs of the armrests and her veins bulge blue and painful.
‘We have to try Mona,’ Alanna whispers.
We call Mona on the interphone and when she comes she is holding the paper cup with Miss Phyllis’s medication.
‘Doesn’t she take these a little later usually?’ I ask.
‘It’s not like she knows what time it is.’
Miss Phyllis swallows the pills automatically. Most of them acquire it as a reflex: it’s like feeding birds. When her head starts to lull to the side, Alanna and I pry her hands from the chair and escort her back to her room, holding her by an elbow each, like a lady to the dances. As we prepare her for sleep, quietly, she begins. I recognize the melody, she has sung this song before. It’s a love song, and it was her pièce de résistance. All the soldiers loved it, on both sides. She always sang it last. But the words are not like I remember them; the lyrics are somewhat different, out of order, like a warped record playing.
⋆
All night Miss Phyllis is singing quietly in her room. She doesn’t bother anyone but if you put your ear to the door you can hear it. Sometimes she pauses to take a sip from the mug on her night table. We think she will stop when the drugs wear off, but in fact she becomes a little louder, clearly enunciating,
Will you accept
This token of good faith
I’m falling for you
My Lili Marlene
DATES
Four Months Earlier
cumulonimbus
Sent: 22/11/2015 – 03:02
Lili,
Isn’t it amusing that you made fun of me for using too many words to get to the point, and now I get to the end of your message and I find I have none. Except for one, the one that you ended with. I keep rereading that last word.
A date?
This is silly, I know, but the moment I saw the word written down I realized I’d never even allowed myself to fully entertain the thought that I should be so lucky. Simultaneously: that there is nothing else I want more in the world. Lili, I am afraid my condition has only got worse since I last wrote to you. I stopped listening to war songs, since you made fun of me, but now I feel a compulsion to copy down your name in a notebook, draw it out in chubby capitals like a schoolgirl would. I might be older than you, but I think of the two of us I am the excited schoolboy. I’m not even embarrassed to tell you this. But I hope you won’t look down on me for this reason, thinking me juvenile.
I have rambled on again, haven’t I? Forgive me, Lili. Let me reply to your question: of course. Of course I would love to go on a date with you.
God, I can’t quite believe it. It’s been so long since I last allowed myself to think about the world in a romantic fashion. The word ‘date’ itself seems so esoteric … almost mystical. Not merely a drink, or drinks, or the serious-sounding coffee. When I was a kid an older boy told me that the best way to trick a girl into thinking you’re serious about her is to take her out for coffee on your first date, not drinks. Neither of us was old enough to drink alcohol then, and I am pretty sure we were both virgins, but in the years since I have thought about his advice often. He’d told me in hushed tones, right outside the headmaster’s office, and so I have been thinking of coffee as the sentimental equivalent of a disciplinary meeting. No surprise it’s been dull drinks with work colleagues and duller one-night stands for the most part of my life. Why am I telling you this?
… because a DATE, the soft potential of it, sickly sweet and self-contained in the word like in its fruit counterpart, compact and dry on the outside, but rich and melt-in-your-mouth once you bite into it … I’ll stop rambling on. Shall we go on a date, Lili?
You pick where, let me treat you.
Clay
kittenwithasledgehammer
Sent: 23/11/2015 – 20:39
oh hey hello
woah intense, chill mate. Just when i thought you’d hit peak poet. were you high? in any case, progress! or as youd say We Shall Meet Up. what shall we do? typical you, now youve put a mega emo load on it. usually i can think of about six million things id like to have a sugar daddy pay for but now umm. mind. is. blank. i was going to suggest Drinks. god forbid lol. now idk, feel like you expect me to come up with some kind of leisure activity like some kind of TA organizing a school trip. shall we go to the zoo or like the aquarium? animals in captivity always seem to do the trick on dates. wonder if it’s cuz seeing a large animal trapped in a small awkward space helps take your mind off the fact that’s pretty much what first dates are like themselves. lol just kidding. listen so long as you dont take me for pasta im pretty much game for anything. oh and also no formal dresscode pls. last time i wore heels to a date the guy had to literally piggyback me home, which also meant i ended up sleeping with him bc i felt bad about it. o shit ive done it again havent i? im sorry.
shall we just say tuesday piccadilly under the statue of cupid? seems to fit your current vibe. no, but honestly, chill out. i promise i wont bail if you answer me this simple question: what is your actual name, clay?
cumulonimbus
Sent: 23/11/2015 – 21:05
My dearest Lili,
I have to be very brief as I am engaged right now, but I felt so elated when my phone vibrated (appropriately, I’d put it in my shirt pocket right against my heart). I got so excited I just couldn’t wait to get back to you and had to do it straight away, for the irrational fear that your decision to meet me might somehow evaporate if I left it even just a few hours. I actually don’t mind having to send you this quickly and in secret … I like the feel of it, like an eighteenth-century illicit love letter, penned on the back of official correspondence, a lipstick kiss hidden in the folded heart of a lady’s napkin … Les liaisons dangereuses!
I’m running out of time and this is to say, simply, I cannot wait for tomorrow, my dearest dearest Lili. 6 p.m. I’ll bring you a single red rose.
I just couldn’t wait to tell you.
Yours,
Neil
kittenwithasledgehammer
Sent: 23/11/2015 – 21:20
hi NEIL
wow anti-climax
les liaisons dangerous?
didn’t they do a movie abou
t it with that chick from that 90s vampire show buffy in it? god ryan philippe is fit in it isn’t he. but really all i used to watch it for was all that lesbian kissing. H-O-T
OK. COOL.
see you TOMORROW, weirdo.
Lili x
p.s. DONT BRING A ROSE. dont. cos that’s just lame.
FLOWERS
Ruth
Now
Alanna has brought in a book. I’ve never seen her with a book before, though I know she keeps an old copy of a Paulo Coelho in her locker. It is a light-blue, slim book, with a picture of a man dressed in white on the cover. I recognized it at first glance because Neil also has a copy, or at least he used to. I gave it to Oxfam when I cleared out. I wonder if Alanna also thinks that Coelho is an ‘enlightening writer’. I’ve never seen her take hers out of the locker so maybe she found it there.
The new book is thick; a hardback. It’s called The Flower Alphabet and has a picture of a white man in a hat on the cover, bending over and holding out a bunch of red roses.
Alanna makes me a cup of tea, tells me to sit down. She says she wants us to read the book together. This makes me anxious. I’ve not read a book with someone since I was five years old and even then my mother had little patience for it. She’d rather put a film on for us to watch.
Will we read a paragraph each? Or does Alanna want me to read it to her? I don’t mind showing her how to do things, but this seems a bridge too far.
She reveals, somewhat reassuringly, that the book is for research. It will help her to create a mood board for the wedding. She is dreamy and mysterious today; she smiles at the ceiling a lot.
‘What’s on her mind?’ I wonder aloud.
‘So much, my friend,’ she sighs, ‘so, so much.’
But, in short, she wants some help picking the flowers. It is traditional for the maid of honour to help the bride select flowers for the bouquet, the church decorations and the wedding tables.
Shelf Life Page 14