First Love

by Gwendoline Riley

  ‘But you’re out of the house now?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ve been out nearly two months now, Neve! And what I’ve done is I’ve rented a little place in Manchester, in the “Green Quarter,” it’s called, do you know it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. In the city centre?’

  ‘Yes. In Ancoats, is it? It’s on Newton Street. It used to be a post office.’

  ‘Oh, yes. But that’s a party building, isn’t it?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘People having parties.’

  ‘Is it? Not in my flat! It can get noisy. It’s very nice, though. “Landscaped Japanese gardens,” as the website says. It’s just like all these modern places, really, quite cramped and bare, but it’s just temporary. I’m looking for somewhere to buy. A little sort of bachelorette pad. Rodger is quite insistent now, that I have to get my things out, finally, so he’s going to go away this weekend and I’m going to go and box everything up. I don’t think I’ll bother with storage. It’s very expensive, isn’t it, I mean, how do you manage?’

  ‘I don’t really. I should sort it out.’

  ‘Yes, so I’ll just get a man with a van and have him stack them in the flat until I find somewhere permanent. If there’s room! I’ve got so much stuff!’

  ‘Did you two have another showdown or did you just clear off?’

  ‘Yes, I just cleared off, really. Just sort of found this place online and went. Oh, but people are so funny about it. I was on a church tour with the Vic Soc last weekend and there were various people saying, Ooh, where’s Rodger? And so I said, Well, we’re not together anymore, and my friend Marianne just burst out crying! And John Quinn, this very nice gay man, he said, Oh, I could tell you two weren’t happy. I thought, Could you?’

  ‘I think you could. I didn’t like being around you. It looked like a vaudeville act.’

  ‘Ooh, a vaudeville act, what’s that? Well. Anyway, I’ve written to Eric and said, Yes, we are separated now. I sent him an email, so…’

  ‘Oh, yes. What does Eric say?’

  ‘Well, I’ve not heard back from him yet, but I think he’s very busy trying to sell his house, so…’

  ‘Did you ever clarify his situation?’

  ‘Not really. I mean, he did make this surprise announcement last year that he had this girlfriend in Windsor, you see, but he hasn’t mentioned her since, and I’ve never met her. He’s often at these Vic Soc dos and she’s never with him, so when do they see each other, hey? Anyway, as I say, he’s moving to London in September, he’s a visiting professor or something…’

  She looked dubious, wrinkled her nose.

  ‘It’s great that you’re so interested in his work,’ I said.

  She went on:

  ‘Yes. So last time I saw him, I was asking him about this flat he’s found down there, and he drew me a floorplan, you see. Here’s the kitchen. Here’s the sitting room. And then, in the bedroom he drew this little rectangle, and he said, And this is my single bed. So I felt like saying, Oh, well, what do you do when your girlfriend comes to stay? But I didn’t, I just said, Oh. And then I said I was thinking of coming to London in the new year, to see some exhibitions, hint hint, and did he say I could stay at his place? No. Nothing. Or maybe go for dinner? No.’

  ‘He’d just told you that his flat only had one bedroom and a single bed.’

  ‘Well. Yes. But. You’d think he’d say, Oh, if you need somewhere to stay, or if you want someone to show you around.’

  ‘You’ve lived in London. Why would he show you around? And you’re an adult, and you’re solvent, what’s wrong with a hotel? I don’t think you should pin all your hopes on this man. It doesn’t sound like there are sparks flying.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, there are. We have terrific badinage. What do you mean? What do you mean, pin all my hopes?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘No, I don’t actually. Now here’s our food, is it? Yes.’

  She sat back and lifted her hands, smiled up at the waiter.

  I went on:

  ‘I just mean, if either of you wanted something to happen, it would have happened, wouldn’t it? And he’s fifty-two, and you’re sixty-two. That’s a big difference for a man his age.’

  ‘Yes, I know. This girlfriend in Windsor is thirty-five, apparently.’

  ‘And you’ve told me before you don’t fancy him.’

  ‘Oh, no, I don’t fancy him. Not at all.’

  ‘And you’re not interested in sex.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Yuck. But I just—I don’t know. I just would like it if, you know, if he needed a plus one for an event that could be me…’

  ‘I see. But what events are these?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Dinners, or…I don’t know. He goes to lots of these dinners with his work. Functions and things.’

  ‘If you aren’t his girlfriend, I’m not sure how you could finesse that. If you’d like to meet up in London, why can’t you say that? I think you should be straightforward rather than trying to contrive something. Men don’t pick up on those things.’

  ‘No. Well, he doesn’t. I mean, in that email I sent him I said I was moving out and oh, what a nightmare it would be, getting my suitcases from the taxi to the train and then up all these stairs to this new flat, because you have to cross these Japanese gardens to get to it, and did he write back and say he’d drive me over, in his nice big car? No. I just could not have been dropping a bigger hint.’

  ‘Well, there you go, then. People can’t be bothered with other people’s dramas. And you’ve got money to pay someone! Why try and insinuate yourself like this?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘As a friend, he might have thought it would be nice to offer…’

  While we ate I asked her about all of her clubs: the ‘Vic Soc,’ the Wine Circle, the Clan Grant Society. She was keeping up with all of them, without Rodger. I asked about my brother, whether he’d seen our father.

  ‘Oh, no. He’s been to see Rodger, though. Apparently Rodger says, You’ll always be my stepson. So…’

  I asked her if she’d been to the pictures recently, then told her what I’d been to see. She held her hands in fists while I was talking, and bared her teeth.

  ‘Well, you’ll never guess what I’ve been having for tea,’ she said, ‘in my new, single life! Oh, it’s awful. I just have a can of lager and a huge bag of Kettle Chips! Oh, or Bombay mix. I just had a tub of Bombay mix last night!’

  ‘That’s really bad for you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I mean, you needn’t have a meal, but you need nutrients.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘What’s wrong with vegetables? Just buy some green beans or some broccoli. They only take a couple of minutes to cook. Vegetables, and some seeds, for protein.’

  ‘Mmm…But I just can’t be bothered!’ she said, happily. And then, in a teenager’s whine, switching her pigeon-chick head from side to side: ‘Can’t be bothered,’ she said. ‘Cannot. Be. Bothered.’

  —

  After dinner we walked back down Dumbarton Road towards my flat. We stopped in at the Three Judges—my idea—where my mother asked for another large glass of white wine. The table we took was on a platform by the window. As I brought over the drinks she was gazing out hungrily, hands on the sill like a child waiting for snow.

  ‘It’s lively around here, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Do you come in here a lot?’

  ‘No, not really. Sometimes.’

  ‘I think I came in here with Rodger last time,’ she said. ‘You know we came up for the Charles Rennie Mackintosh weekend? Well, we did, and I think we came in here, because we were staying in a hotel quite near here. Well, a guest house, really. Did I ever tell you about that? Oh, God, it was awful. Rodger went mad.’

  ‘Did he? Go on.’

  ‘Well, we’d all been out, with Dennis and Sarah, and yes, I think we came here, and just, drinking and drinking, and then sort of rolled back to
this guest house, where Rodger got fresh, you see.’

  ‘Got fresh?’

  ‘Yes. Just. You know. So I rebuffed him, you see. I said just, “Oh. No.” And then he just went mad. Absolutely mad. He said the material of my nightdress was disgusting. Yes, that was it: “The material of your nightdress is disgusting.” And then he said, “It’s all right for you, you can pleasure yourself.” ’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know.’

  ‘Did you ever have sex, Mum?’

  She shook her head, screwed up her eyes.

  ‘Oh, no. No. But, Neve, it gets worse! It gets worse!’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He said he’d seen me masturbating in the garden!’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Well, it’s a strip of concrete, really. Our “terrace,” I used to call it. He said he’d seen me out there on the sun lounger pleasuring myself!’

  ‘Pleasuring yourself?’

  ‘Well, masturbating, you see.’

  ‘You were masturbating?’

  ‘No! Neve! I don’t know what on earth he thought he’d seen!’

  ‘Perhaps that’s what he wanted to see.’

  ‘Ooh, is it? Do you think?’

  ‘Of course. It’s a fantasy. Keep up. Shall we go back now? Is that finished?’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Nearly. Sorry, Neve,’ she said, face flushed, gulping down the last of her drink.

  —

  She was taking the bed, and I was sleeping in the living room, on the settee. I turned over the cushion where Kit-Kat liked to roll about, smudged as it was with little tufts of her black hair.

  —

  My mother came knocking very early in the morning. A timid knock, first, then she pushed the door open, peeped in, then stepped in.

  ‘Neve? Neve?’

  I sat up, pulling the blanket up with me.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Nothing, Neve.’

  She had on her long nightdress, and her hair was fluffed-up. She bared her teeth and looked around the room, then shyly back at me. She took another step forward. She had her fleecy bedsocks on, too: baby pink with a fluffy cuff. (These were called ‘Dozy Toes.’ There’d been two pairs in my Christmas parcel.)

  ‘Oh, are you nudie, Neve?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you sleep in the nudie?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Ooh, doesn’t it feel funny? Oh, I could never sleep in the nudie!’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing. Just, seeing if you were up, so…I’ll make some tea, shall I? Do you have tea? I don’t know if I can work that kettle!’

  —

  We went out for breakfast instead. In the Big Mouth Café she opened the magazine that came with the newspaper.

  ‘Are you a feminist, Neve?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I’d hope so. Why?’

  ‘Well, we’re all feminists now, apparently.’

  ‘OK.’

  She had before her a spread about some activists.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They’re so against men, aren’t they, but half of them look like men!’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. Don’t you think?’

  When we swapped our bits of the paper she started huffing about the front page, which featured another old entertainer charged with sexual assault. An archive picture showed the accused in a red jumper, grinning and doing an OK sign. Next to it was a shot of him on the court steps: sour-faced. My mother didn’t see the point of any of this. Back in the seventies every girl was gripped, groped and raped, said she, lifting her chin, her accent getting coarser (you heard it on the rs).

  ‘I was raped, when I was at university, I was more or less raped in Liverpool when I first moved back. It didn’t ruin my life. Why do they always have to say, Ooh, it ruined my life? And everything I went through with your father, I mean, if that didn’t ruin my life, why are they saying their lives are ruined?’

  ‘Strange, isn’t it?’ I said.

  I was more interested, in that same conversation, to hear, apropos of a friend of mine who was expecting, that my mother had had terrible panic attacks in the weeks before I was born. I didn’t know that. Twice my father called an ambulance, apparently. My mother couldn’t breathe.

  What was she so frightened of?

  ‘The pain, of course! I was sick with fear!’

  —

  Just that? Maybe. I think she must have known she’d invited a reckoning—one she’d dodge, naturally, but that wouldn’t have forestalled the terror, would it?

  I’m very glad my mother left my father, of course, but as I got older it did get harder to valorize that flight. This cover-seeking—desperate, adrenalized—had constituted her whole life as far as I could see. In avoidance of any reflection, thought. In which case her leaving him was a result of the same impulse that had had her hook up with him in the first place. Not to think, not to connect: marry an insane bully. Simper at him. Not to be killed: get away from him. And her children? Her issue? How did they fit into her scheme? As sandbags? Decoys?

  Perhaps I should be more moved by her than I am. I love animals, their natural ways. I have asked her about my—our—childhood, that house, but you wouldn’t think I’d spoken. She just stared back at me. Maybe she never noticed what we grew up with. Left to herself, back there, as I’m sure she felt she was, she laced the fetid air with her high-pitched humming, her little self-announcements:

  ‘Well, I’m going to sit in the sun lounge if anyone wants me. Do they? No.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to eat some strawberries and cream and watch Wimbledon. Yes.’

  My brother was even more incensed by these notices than I.

  ‘Do I give a shit?’ he’d scream.

  You couldn’t see the television if the curtains were open, so they never were open. She’d clear a space on the settee and hold up by her chest her bowl of mushy frozen strawberries, topped with spray cream. She lifted her chin, bared her teeth.

  I tried to lie there with her once, when I was small. She didn’t like it, I could tell, but I didn’t get down. Ski Sunday, was she watching? Or a Grand Prix? I took a chance, made another move: I held her clenched bare foot and kissed it.

  ‘Oh. No, Neve.’

  She struggled to pull away.

  ‘No. Don’t do that,’ she said, looking fearful, then angry. She pulled her knees up by her chest. ‘That’s like what a…boyfriend would do,’ she said. ‘Not your daughter. No.’

  —

  She got married again a year after my brother moved out. I sat and watched her smirk her way through those vows. A wriggly performance. And he was no better, I might say.

  Then began her leering pleas: ‘Do come and visit, Neve. You’ve got a lovely home here now.’ I went once, to that house, in Aigburth. I went for help, because I was desperate, after that final break with Michael. Margaret was away, and anyway I felt too ashamed to tell my friends what had happened. It is strange what we expect from people, isn’t it? Deep inside ourselves. As adults. I was crying and she bared her teeth at me, like a cretin. I had to run. I took my bag, my coat. Only she wouldn’t let me leave. She blocked my way at the front door and screamed for Rodger. She was looking over my shoulder and shrieking out his name.

  ‘Rodger! Help! Rodger! She’s gone mad!’

  —

  All through that marriage, if I asked how she was, I got her itinerary, read out from the long-leaved kitchen calendar, if we were on the phone, or else from the little diary she scrabbled for in her bag:

  ‘Yes, so, Wednesday’s the Wine Circle, isn’t it? And then the Vic Soc on Friday…’

  And all in that doll’s-tea-party voice: self-enclosed, self-chivvying. She was very keen to share her programme that day in the café, too, opening the slim appointment book on her knee, smiling down at the week’s activities.

  ‘Now where are we? Wednesday, yes. Look at thi
s. Every day I’ve got something on. I never stop!’

  ‘You need to stay in more.’

  ‘I know! It’s hysteria, Neve! Hysteria and desperation! I panic if I’ve got nothing on. But there’s all sorts on in Manchester, isn’t there? This art opening at the Whitworth I’m going to, see, so…’

  ‘Does anyone talk to you when you’re at these dos?’

  ‘No! Well, no one new. I stand there “looking approachable” all night! But no one approaches! No one. No. There are people I know from the Vic Soc. But yes, I would…yes, I do just need some mates now, so…I mean, I did ask, when I first moved into this place, I did ask some people from the Vic Soc round for, you know, flatwarming nibbles and drinks, and some people came, but you would think, wouldn’t you, that, you know, I might get an invitation in return. Nothing. Not one.’

  She went on:

  ‘But I said that to Eric, actually, when I first met him. You know, I invited him out for a Christmas meal with, you know, Rodger and Sylvia and her husband, and he said, “I seem to have been promoted to the top table rather quickly!” So I just said, ‘No, actually.’ And I told him that I’d looked around at my sixtieth and there wasn’t one person I could phone up and go to the pictures with or for coffee with, so…’

  ‘But that’s an interesting insight, isn’t it? Why do you think that is?’

  ‘Well…Why do I think what is? What d’you mean?’

  ‘Why do you think you don’t have any friends you can meet up with?’

  ‘Oh, never mind meet up with. You know I broke my ankle the first week I was in that flat?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know.’

  ‘Well, I did. I just fell off the pavement. Thankfully a very nice man did come and help me, and called an ambulance for me, but after that I had this plaster cast on for two weeks. Well, it was like a big ski boot, really, but it was removable, for when I went to bed or if I wanted to get in the bath. You had to keep it dry, you see, so when I went down to get my mail in the morning I had to put a Tesco bag over it, so…Not very pleasant! But I had that on when I had this flat-warming. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that people would say, Oh, are you all right, what have you done? Not one person—well, one person asked but only so she could tell the story of her injury—and then John Quinn, who I’m quite friendly with, actually, he came over and asked how I was and I said, Well, I’ve broken my ankle, John, and he said, Oh, and then—not, How did you do that? Or, How are you managing? Just, Oh—and then asked me what time we were finishing! So…’