In love we look mostly at ourselves and also at our lover. (Those who look only at their lover are using that love to turn away from themselves.) Our senses are turned up but at the same time we have difficulty absorbing those things that don’t pertain. We feel strongly present in the world just as it ebbs away. Nothing can reach past this love. If danger comes, we have acquired immunity. The horror and despair that used to reach us as if they were our own are now distant scenes. Love makes us heartless.
*
Iris is being necessarily heartless. She can’t stand what’s happened to David or the idea that she somehow caused it. She’s frightened by how much she felt when he pressed his head to hers in the shower. It was habit or reflex – not love. How could he now be capable of love? He has feelings and desires but no memory. Nothing builds. And what is love without a story? He cannot even name her.
His family describe him now as harmless, especially when encouraging Iris to take the girls to visit. There are ways in which he’ll never hurt her again but he is not harmless. His helplessness is a form of tremendous power and she must cut herself off from this. She learnt to seal herself against each disappointment in their marriage. Faced with his new brutal presence in her life, she knows that she must feel nothing.
She falls through her thoughts at night and it is Raif who catches her. He helped her up when she fell down the station steps. His fingertip against her cheek steadied her. It’s how she remembers them walking through the doorway at the museum – as a steadying.
One morning at breakfast, Kate asks a question.
Now that Dad has had a stroke, is he a rapist?
Of course not. What made you think that?
There was this man who had a stroke and he couldn’t stop raping everyone.
Where?
Online.
What have you been looking at?
Not for the first time, Iris thinks she shouldn’t let them have a computer in their room. Or that she should check the history and update the filters. But everyone says all that is pointless and the more you restrict them, the more they want to see. She doesn’t want to think about what they might see.
Mum, says Lou. There was a woman who took her clothes off in public and when she wanted to pee she just did. Right where she was.
Didn’t Dad do that? asks Kate.
We’re not supposed to know about that! says Lou.
Yes, he did, says Iris.
Talking about this is better than talking about rape so she explains.
His brain injury means that he’s forgotten how to behave. It’s not his fault. He doesn’t mean it. And yes, he did pee in front of everyone and that’s how they knew what had happened to his brain. But who told you? I didn’t.
We heard you on the phone.
We always hear you.
Well, you shouldn’t listen.
We don’t want to. We can’t help it.
Kate starts to giggle. Lou too.
Did he really? Pee in front of the doctor and everyone?
Apparently. He walked over to the sink, peed and sat down again and carried on the conversation.
In front of people?
Yes.
Iris is laughing too. For the first time she isn’t pretending anything to her children. They’re just having a conversation.
a lapse
Winter gives way. Gales hurtle across the city. The wind swerves between buildings in concentrated gusts, reminding people that they live on a small island and that this city is right on the edge of it. A crane is blown over, scaffolding rattles, hoardings ripple and flap. But the sun that follows draws forth a pale edge of green, yellow and white which steadily brightens. Hearts quicken. The skies are moving again.
Raif visits his mother once a month, on a Saturday, arriving for lunch. Usually he stays the night. While Helen, alone in the flat in London, imagines him tucked up in a bed that’s too small for him, surrounded by posters and toys, he’s often out till the early hours. He’ll text her the next day, on his way home, explaining that there’s no signal at his mother’s house and he’s sorry not to have been in touch.
When he goes home, Raif encounters his sixteen-year-old self just as Helen envisages but not in the posters on his bedroom wall. As a teenager he found his town exciting and regularly frightening. All the underground activity that melts into city life is difficult to hide in a small place on the sea edge. He was tolerated by a gang of boys who wandered the streets seeking out dark corners. They observed deals being struck for sex or drugs. They loitered opposite a house where the front door hung off its hinges and sheets were pinned across the windows. They knew whose number was given in the small ad in the local paper offering home massage – or they said they did, nudging each other and pointing at the town’s one traffic warden as she passed by. They followed exhausted women and wary men and heard them speak in tongues. These strangers had arrived in their town as if risen from the sea and they believed that to live by the sea was to see a richer side of life.
Raif tells his mother he’s off to the pub to catch up with some old friends. Out of tact, Bridget doesn’t ask who. There weren’t any particular friends she can recall. The landlord and the regulars remember him and nod hello but no one starts a conversation.
One night he looks up from his drink and there she is: Leigh, the queen of the girls, the one who offered herself as a girlfriend after his father died. He was stupid about it and didn’t understand. It’s her – the same emphatic stance and square shoulders, the tightly cut denim jacket, the high ponytail of black hair and she’s turning towards him and oh god the same rosy face and wide mouth but, he actually shakes himself, of course it isn’t her. That was some twenty-five years ago and this girl’s twenty at most. Someone says something and the girl laughs and her hand flies up to cover her mouth. The same laugh, the same gesture – Raif’s body is exploding with the force of recognition. She’s walking towards him now, no, past him, and their eyes meet and there’s … nothing. Her body is telling her nothing at all. Why should it? She doesn’t know him.
Raif stays where he is, almost daring to imagine that she might come back. He drinks fake brands of vodka and lager, and plays pool with himself on the warped table. At midnight he’s sitting on a concrete bench on the sea wall. He has a half-bottle of whisky in his pocket but hasn’t drunk much of it. He never does. It’s more of a prop, something he would have offered the gang while they stood around in the cold. He’s at the opposite end of town to his home, which is at the golf course, library end. This is the car park, caravan, nightclub, games hall end and much of it is derelict. Even the sea seems to have forgotten what it’s for and slops uncertainly against the shingle.
Is he still waiting for the girl to come back? It’s colder than he’ll admit and there’s nothing to watch, no one about. Eventually he sets off home and, turning a corner, he sees her again – the denim jacket, the high ponytail. Without thinking, he runs to catch her up. She turns, ready to shout, and then she laughs, her hand to her mouth, and shakes her head.
I know you, don’t I?
It’s not the girl in the pub but it is Leigh. Her face isn’t rosy, her mouth is thin and her hair a flat chemical black scraped back from white roots.
It’s me, from school, remember? You gave me such a shock!
Of course, he says and she kisses him on the cheek just as he tries to shake her hand.
You haven’t changed much, she says. I mean, your hair’s gone a bit and you’ve put on a bit but no, you haven’t changed.
This really is Leigh, which means that he, like her, is past forty and not fourteen. He ends up walking her home, where, she explains, she lives with her daughter. People think they’re sisters. She invites him in, makes coffee and he pulls the whisky from his pocket, which is just the kind of lordly gesture he dreamt of making back then.
Here he is, alone, late at night, with the queen of the girls! She asks him methodically about his life and when he gets to the part about his wife havin
g died, she starts to cry. He’s used to this and waits for her to reach out a hand and say something consoling.
Only she doesn’t. Leigh isn’t crying for the beautiful boy who didn’t know who he was but because he has brought back a time when life coursed through her. When he spoke of his dead wife she could think only of her own deadness. She’s forgotten that he’s there.
Raif wonders if he ought to find out why she’s so sad but the idea tires him. He holds her hand for a while and then gets up and says that it’s been lovely to see her and he leaves. Later he realises that she never said his name. He’s right – she didn’t remember it.
*
Leigh’s sadness makes him want to reassure himself that his life is brightly lit and peopled. In the morning he calls Helen as soon as he wakes and asks her to come down for lunch. His mother, he says, is dying to meet her.
Helen decides not to wonder why she’s being invited down so suddenly (or why there is now enough phone signal for Raif to call). She brings flowers.
Look, Mum, says Raif. Tulips from Helen.
Bridget is sitting on a bench in the garden. She has closed her eyes and is enjoying the sun on this prematurely springlike day. Her garden is already erupting with crocuses and narcissi. She doesn’t need flowers. She passes the tulips to Raif without looking.
Put them in something, she says.
Helen notices that Bridget pronounces his name differently – Ryeef – but she won’t remark on it. Meeting his mother is a big step and she doesn’t want to ruin it. (When did she become so tentative?)
You have a lovely garden, she says.
Bridget nods. This is a nice thing for the girl to say, only she doesn’t stop there. She goes on.
Really lovely. So cared for, so cleverly laid out.
Snake’s head fritillaries, Bridget says to shut her up.
Really? Do please show me.
Not yet, of course. In May. You’ll have to come back then to see them. Will you?
I’d love to!
I don’t think so.
Raif looks at his watch.
Mum, do you want me to do anything about lunch?
Lunch? Bridget wonders.
He means baste the roast or put in the potatoes. He hasn’t noticed that nothing has happened in the kitchen today. He made himself toast and coffee, went for a walk and met Helen at the station, having left his mother a note: I’ve invited a friend called Helen down for lunch. Please don’t go to any trouble.
You didn’t see the note, did you? says Raif. I’m so sorry. Why don’t I take you both out? What do you feel like, Mum? A roast at The Berkshire Arms or fish at Sarsons?
Bridget opens her eyes.
Snake’s head fritillaries.
Helen can tell that something’s not right. It’s as if Bridget keeps meeting dead ends in herself. Why hadn’t Raif warned her? Because Raif has seen nothing. His mother is his mother. He sees what he remembers seeing and hasn’t noticed the clutter becoming chaos and the time it takes her to complete the journey from one room to the next.
Bridget stands up, crosses the lawn and prods at something in a bed.
Helen starts to say something.
I didn’t know, she begins.
Know what, says Raif.
It’s not a question. She decides to change the subject and so says what she meant not to.
That your name is really pronounced Ryeef.
It’s not.
But your mother—
She didn’t say it like that. She said it properly.
In the kitchen Helen sees the note Raif left for Bridget that morning. A friend called Helen. What had he said? My mother is dying to meet you. Bridget has no idea who she is.
On the train home Raif sits opposite and studies Helen while she reads a magazine. His mother seems not to like her. The triplets responded in the same way. And what does he know? He mistook a teenager for her mother. He did not know his wife. He has become so uncertain that he cannot form a view of his own. He looks at Helen and wonders if he knows her. What has he missed?
He’s looking for an explanation for a lapse in – what? Confidence? Judgement? Feeling? All he knows is that he’s not sure and can’t act. So he listens more carefully than he should to what others say and his own idea of Helen stalls just as it should be building.
I can’t say
Iris is at home, on the phone to an old friend who lives on the other side of the world. She has to tell him what’s happened to David and does so as lightly as she can.
At least he doesn’t feel sorry for himself any more, she laughs.
Lou is sitting at the kitchen table doing her homework. As soon as Iris is off the phone, she starts to yell.
Don’t do that! Don’t talk about my father like that!
I didn’t mean—
Like he’s a joke! You always have. Even when he had MS you were horrible. Making him do stuff and shouting all the time.
That’s not—
Maybe he had the stroke because you were so cross!
You don’t understand.
That’s the point! I do. And so does Kate.
There’s stuff you don’t know.
Like what?
I can’t say.
That’s just an excuse.
I love your father but he—
He got ill.
But he also—
No! I don’t want to know about your private stuff! He got ill and nothing else is as bad as that and if you’d been nice …
It’s exactly what David would have said. Why can’t you be nice? Lou goes off to her room before Iris can respond.
An hour later Lou comes to find her mother but hangs back in the doorway. There’s such weather passing through her stiff little face that Iris wants to take her in her arms but she hesitates. She feels respectful of her daughter and no longer sure how to approach her. Iris of the layers and walls sees that Lou is starting to form her own.
What Lou wants to say is that she’s sorry for shouting at her mother. Also that while she’s sad about her father, she’s glad that neither of her parents is pretending any more that they’re alright. And anyway she and Kate have done a lot of pretending too. About stuff they’ve heard and seen.
She wants to explain that being at home is like being dead and all her life is out there at school, with her friends and this boy she passes on the stairs on a Tuesday afternoon between science and maths. He was at her bus stop the other day when she knows he goes home in the opposite direction.
She wants to speak of her body and how she can’t look in a mirror because she doesn’t recognise herself and nothing looks like it does online. Adolescence is moving towards her and part of her is rushing to greet it while another insists that this is too soon. She wants above all to stop herself telling her mother that she’s found a photo.
Lou and Kate are too old for hide-and-seek but they’ve made the game into a family joke. Lou always hides under David’s desk because she intends to be found as quickly as possible. Kate knows this and refuses to find her so Lou gets to spend some quiet time curled up under the desk. After shouting at Iris, that was where Lou had gone.
Everything in that floor-level landscape was familiar to her: the wonky desk leg and the broken box file, the holes in the carpet and the folded piece of card. Now that her mind is rushing about naming and probing, her hand reached out and picked the card up.
It was a photo of a woman. She wasn’t particularly young or old or pretty, and she was sitting on a beach. In a big coat, not a bikini, but all the same Lou could tell that the photo was private. It’d been folded up and then hidden. Not hidden. It had slipped down here and not been looked for. Or not found. This was her father’s desk and she knew from the atmosphere she grew up in, the tight voices of her parents and the words they used, that no one wanted to find this woman. She didn’t need to be in a bikini because the look on her face made it clear. She was smiling as if she’d won something.
Kate and Lou believe
that information is its own solution but now Lou knows something she doesn’t want to. What should she do with the photo? She can’t put it back because Iris works at this desk now. And it doesn’t feel safe to throw it in a bin, not even a bin in the street in case someone finds it who knows her mother – or who is her mother. So she carries it up to Kate and says that she has an object for the museum. Kate opens the cupboard. In addition to the lead to David’s phone charger there’s a disposable razor, a travelcard and a button from one of his sludge-lemon shirts. Each has a date and number written on a slip beside it. Lou unfolds the photo and passes it to Kate, who folds it up again and puts it in the cupboard, her ten-year-old mind rushing past what it might mean.
So Iris is right that Lou has a secret and doesn’t want to share it. She tells Lou that she’s sorry and Lou says she knows.
the object reminds us
Iris is leaving work when the seed of a migraine starts to burrow behind her left eye. She takes the pink pills. Within the hour, just as she reaches home, a blanket will be laid across her brain and she’ll be able to sleep. She’s on the street when she remembers that the debate she promised to take part in at Raif’s college is tonight. She had an email only a week ago from the person organising it, which she’d skimmed over because she was too tired to think about it. But it’s not like her to forget anything so completely, especially not the debate which had been their excuse if not for meeting then for meeting again.
Why did she agree to take part? She finds it hard enough to speak in public without having someone argue against her. She has to call the student looking after the girls and hope she can stay on and then get across the city in thirty minutes, which is just possible. Tonight there’s a train waiting on the platform when she arrives. She settles down to make some notes but halfway through the journey it occurs to her that she’s travelling towards Raif, who she hasn’t seen since … when?
She lets herself remember now that she rang him – god knows why – when David had his stroke, but left no message. She tried three times before she calmed down and remembered that she didn’t have any real claim on his attention. They were colleagues who’d enjoyed a flirtation, nothing more. He hadn’t returned her calls and soon the tension and excitement his presence brought her evaporated. If she thought of him at all it was as the person she was doing this favour for – taking part in the debate. Now it seems she’s even forgotten that.
In the City of Love's Sleep Page 15