First Love

by Gwendoline Riley

  My coffee was too strong. I dragged a teaspoon through it and watched it lap at the sides of its silly French bowl. While Kerrigan went to get himself a refill, I looked around the café, which was quite busy: lots of young faces in computer light, one fattish man in a body warmer, absently feeding bits of flapjack to his dog. When Kerrigan came back, we both tuned in for a while to the woman next to us, an Irish woman, with a dainty face, and her maroon hair en brosse. She was on her phone, and stirring her tea, then flicking through a magazine.

  ‘No, but she’s OK in Beaverbrooks, isn’t she? Ah…She’s so good with people. Well, she can’t compare…I said to her, life’s different now, you can’t compare like that. She has to put it behind her, that old life. Ah, did you? Well, you’re very grown up these days. What are you like? No, I can’t thank everybody enough. I had a very special afternoon. I was a bit heavy-hearted, but I do have such lovely memories. So I’m just going to look out of the window now and chill. And think about everybody and how lovely it all was. Now if you go into Timpsons, will you say hello to the lads there for me? Will you?’

  Outside the sunset abetted one last queer revival of light, so the outlook was torched; wet bus stop, wet shutters, all deep-dyed.

  Kerrigan and I said goodbye at the station.

  I waited for the lift, and shivered.

  3

  When I first came down, to visit, this struck me as a real old-style bachelor’s room. Shipshape. Unfussy. I did my hair in a small, poxed mirror, hung up on a nail. On the chest of drawers was Edwyn’s tortoiseshell comb, his cologne bottle, the glass ashtray where he put his watch at night. At least it’s cooler in here, in the summer. The sunlight comes filtered through ragged summer greenery. Fuzzy shadows move on the blue-grey walls.

  Edwyn emptied half of his wardrobe for me when I moved in, and I started to take care of my clothes, too, hanging them up as he did, lining my shoes up next to his. He also bought a new bed, and over the course of those first few months had the hallway and the living room repainted.

  ‘Well, it’s a new start, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to do all this and now I’ve got a reason to.’

  The day I moved in, I arrived at Euston in the early evening, stepping off the train with a holdall to shoulder, somehow, over my winter cape, and a suitcase to drag on its one working wheel. Edwyn hurried down the ramp to meet me: overcoat, long stride. He gave me a hard hug, his hat in his hand.

  That was January. Each day brought just a few hours of dampened light, and the few friendships I’d thought to broach down here fell into desuetude, as I didn’t go out, didn’t answer emails, then felt guilty and answered carelessly, at too great a length. I didn’t want to see anyone, really, apart from Edwyn, as deep into April the temperature remained jammed at freezing. I got wrapped up and walked out with him every morning, up to Earl’s Court, then took the tenner he gave me to the supermarket and bought something for our tea. Just vegetables, I mean; pulses, seeds, nuts for protein. I learned to cook, quite well, having never bothered with a recipe before. Four floors up, lying on the new bed, I’d look up from my work and cherish the peace. I’d start making dinner at seven, and by eight I’d be at the window, watching for Edwyn.

  Then I was sick, that night, after my party.

  Then in September I got my job.

  My father died in January. We got married in June. When we got back here that day we lay on the bed with the fan on, dozed a little and held each other. Edwyn told me things about himself that he said no one else knew and I felt close to him.

  —

  When this was a family house, this floor was for the children. This would have been the nursery, or half of it. Now the chest of drawers fills one narrow alcove, and a bookcase with locked glass doors stands in the other.

  I see Edwyn sitting on the end of the bed, thoughtful, happy, a pile of those art books next to him.

  I see him sleeping on his back. Fine, lank blond hair, weathered skin. Both hands on the pillow, in loose fists.

  —

  My problem finds a symbol, I think, in my insisting, for so long, on trying to kiss him on the mouth. I knew he didn’t like it. Yet if we were sitting together, or lying together, I would keep leaning in. At which he’d turn his face, lift his chin. More than that: he’d tighten his grip and steer me away. I didn’t get that message. I chose instead a mounting fretfulness. Saying goodbye in the morning, at the station, I continued to stand there after our hug, eyes closed, head tilted up, only to find he’d walked off.

  Once when I tried in bed, he sat up and leant away from me.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’ he said. ‘I want to do things when I want to do them.’

  ‘But you never do,’ I said (I whined). ‘Why can’t I say anything about that? It’s just a kiss.’

  ‘Christ, will you listen to yourself? How do I get out of this? How?’

  He got out of bed then, with a jerk, and then, I don’t know, he must have just roamed the flat for a bit. Working off his anger, I thought. But no. When he came back, I could tell it wasn’t over. We lay there side by side for a while, and I kept hearing him take a breath, as if he were about to speak. Dissolved in the dark, the pressure this built up was horrible. I felt my jaw clenching, my heart going.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ he said, finally.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘What makes you think you can treat me like this, hm? When I’m making the money, I’m paying the bills, I’m making your life possible.’

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know.

  ‘What part of my being ill don’t you understand?’ Edwyn said. ‘What part of “no” don’t you understand? Hm? I am in pain, all of the time. OK?’

  My eyes started to sting. But now his tone changed, as it often did. Now he spoke in his soft voice, his understanding voice.

  ‘You can’t help it,’ he said. ‘I know you can’t. Women are sexobsessed. I know it’s all they think about. It’s all they give a fuck about, really.’

  Still I didn’t stop. I insisted on a different picture: him peering out meanly from the crenels. Little boy in a tablecloth cape, in a sandcastle fort, seeing how hugely his terrible shadow falls. And if I could just talk him down…

  There is something dreadful in that. Something frightening, when he was so ill, worn out. In my suggesting ‘other things.’ What did I expect? And wasn’t it humiliating, trying to put that into words, with him narrowing his eyes at me? He said he couldn’t see the point. Didn’t I get it? he said. ‘That’s not sex, for me, there’s nothing enjoyable about it. It’s supposed to be a preamble, it’s pointless on its own.’

  And besides, sex for him had to be spontaneous, he had to feel overwhelmed, overcome. If it was planned out, he felt nothing. Later he decided he’d ‘always hated sex.’ ‘It’s just one more thing women want from you,’ he said.

  By then any physical hint made him furious. And well it might. I wasn’t listening, was I?

  ‘What’s the matter now? I’ve got to go to work. You don’t get that, do you?’

  ‘Christ, you stink. Your breath stinks. You smell like rotten vegetables.’

  I tried being silly. Holding on to his shoulder in the morning, wiggling about.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m being saucy.’

  ‘That’s saucy, is it? Who told you that was attractive? Seriously. Where did you get the idea that that was sexy? In any way.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to be sexy. I was just being silly.’

  ‘No, I’m serious. That’s what you think is sexy, is it? That’s what passes for sexy in your world, does it? Why would you think that was attractive? What is it about that that you think anyone would find appealing?’

  —

  For days after that first row, when I was sick, I mean, Edwyn didn’t like to touch me at all. He was uncomfortable when I hugged him. When I reached my arms out he looked at me as if he knew exactly what I was composed of, was marvelling at my malignancy, th
at nature could endorse such a contrivance. Still, we continued to sit down together for dinner. I tried to get through it. One night, feeling the silence, I said I must like to be cast out, mustn’t I?

  ‘Sure,’ Edwyn said. ‘Looks like it. But that’s not my problem. I hope you see that. I’m not interested in that.’

  If I could just have taken that in. Then, and later. It took me a long time, months, of plays and niggles. Hopeful looks. As birds drum on the earth to bring up the worms, I suppose, until I got what I really wanted, which turned out to be—a different kind of fulfilment:

  ‘Love for you is possession, isn’t it?’ Edwyn said, abruptly, one evening as we finished another quiet meal. The end of a long train of thought, evidently.

  ‘Is it?’ I said. ‘I don’t know. Go on.’

  ‘It’s jealous and mean. It’s smothering…Like a swamp. You’re like a baby, really, aren’t you? You won’t be happy until we’re both just crawling around this place in our own shit.’

  That rang truer. I felt a dullness seep into my system: the feeling of having been found out. I had thought in the past, wondered, trying to be close to people, if there wasn’t something about me that might horrify them. What might they see?

  Edwyn went on:

  ‘Of course I should have seen it coming. I blame myself, don’t worry. Everything turns to shit. Put two people together and it turns to shit almost instantly. I should have explained that, when you wanted to move in. I should have said, if you don’t want this to turn to shit, then stay away. But you were sweet, and you seemed to want it so badly…’

  Was it my idea? I couldn’t remember. (Another lacuna. I should keep track of them, shouldn’t I? It isn’t good enough, to keep blanking on these points. Not to have shaken myself free of it, this fog.)

  ‘Didn’t you want it?’ I said.

  ‘No. It was you. Don’t start changing the facts. I’m not trading in fantasy here. You wanted to move in. I didn’t want it. I never wanted to live with anybody. There is a reason why I’ve spent my life alone. This is the reason. Because women are insane, and manipulative, and sick. But you were very clear on what was going to happen. And I was stupid, I’ll admit that, I’ll take full responsibility for that: I let you have your way.’

  ‘Right. I see. OK.’

  —

  ‘I keep asking myself what it was about you that made me do this, made me get into it, up to my neck…I think I thought, She’s a writer, she’ll understand that we don’t own each other. But your world is very you-centred, isn’t it? Very infantile. Do you think the world, for me, should start and end with you? Perhaps you do…Is that it?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘What do I do to get out of this? Do I kill myself? Don’t think I don’t think about it. Don’t think that doesn’t go round and round in my head all day, every day. Don’t think I don’t know that’s what you want, too. I can see it. I can see the resentment, and the rage boiling over…’

  ‘I’m not resentful. I’m grateful.’

  ‘I’ve got my heart disease trying to kill me, I’ve got this condition, so I’m always in pain, and I’ve got you. I’m paying for something…Well, that’s it, from now on. I’ll do what I like, you do what you like. You don’t have to worry about any of this anymore.’

  ‘Worry about what?’

  ‘This. Cooking. Eating together. You hate it. I’m sick of having to rush because you finish in five minutes and then sit there filled with fury. At having to sit with me, spend any time with me, spend any time doing anything which isn’t exactly what you want to do.’

  ‘I don’t mind cooking. I’m not furious. I like trying to make healthy things.’

  ‘No, you’re done with it. By the time you’ve prepared a meal you’re boiling over with anger and resentment, I can feel it. I feel it when you sit down. That’s it for you. Enough time wasted on me. You’ve said yourself that you’d just take a pill if you could. You don’t like food. You don’t like meals. Eating together, enjoying somebody’s company like an adult, it’s not for you, is it? That’s fine, I understand. Children get bored at the table. I used to resent every second sitting with the grown ups. I don’t want either of us to force each other to be what we’re not. You hate having to sit here with me, whereas for me, after a day at work, having my supper is something I look forward to. It’s not the same for you, of course. You’re here all day. But do you see? This is one of the few fucking pleasures left in my life. And now I’m in the last few years of my fucking miserable life. OK? And I don’t want this, anymore.’

  ‘Please don’t be so vicious.’

  ‘I’m not being vicious. I’m not being vicious, honey, I’m stating a few facts, here. You’re supposed to like facts, aren’t you?’

  ‘You called me a child.’

  ‘When did I call you a child? You hear what you want to hear, don’t you? I said children get bored at the table, which they do. I know what I said. I won’t have my words, twisted, OK? I’ve had enough of that. I won’t live in your fantasy world. You won’t drag me into the shit pit where you live, OK? I don’t know if you’re confusing me with your father, but I’m not joining in with that, OK?’

  —

  I took my things into the kitchen, then came back out and sat on the settee. I thought the row was over. I was thinking about what he’d said. But he stood up and kept talking, as he took his own stuff out to the sink:

  ‘I’m a carer, aren’t I? That’s what I’ve become. You need constant attention. You can’t be left alone. You can’t be an adult, I don’t know why…But again, it is my own fault. I knew what I was getting. I knew you were damaged.’

  Here I had to tell him that I had always lived alone. That attention was not something I craved, partly—since he’d brought him up—because I’d hated my father’s interest so much. Strange what one gets pedantic about, but there you are…What else was I going to dispute?

  ‘You mean you were on benefits,’ Edwyn said.

  ‘I was on tax credits, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m saying I have no problem being alone. I’ve always been independent. That’s all.’

  ‘Oh, independent. Ah. OK. Funny definition you have of that word.’

  ‘No, it’s not. I don’t need constant attention. That’s all I’m saying. I do try and kiss you, that’s true, but I can stop. I will, don’t worry.’

  ‘As I say, whatever cosy spin you want to put on it. But don’t say you were independent. You were living off the state. You were on benefits.’

  ‘Why are we talking about this? You get tax credits when you are employed. I was doing fine. But that’s not the point I was making.’

  ‘Well, I’m not as up on all of that as you are. But where I’m from, being independent means being able to look after yourself. That’s what that word means, do you understand? I know I’m more or less alone in giving a fuck what words mean anymore. Independent. It’s just a brain-dead feminist flag to fly for women who haven’t got a man. Your generation has a funny attitude.’

  ‘You don’t listen to me.’

  ‘Listen to yourself…Christ, listen to yourself, honey. You sound like a twelve-year-old. A twelve-year-old trying to win an argument. This isn’t an argument. You don’t get that, do you?’

  4

  A ‘childish sense of drag,’ did I say? To feel ‘shut down inside.’ But certain impulses do persist. I found myself visiting my mother this April; leaving the house one morning and heading to Euston instead of to the supermarket. This was the first time I’d seen her since Glasgow.

  ‘Oh, you’ll be so proud of me,’ she said. ‘I’ve been going to Oxfam every day. I’m surprised they haven’t started turning me away! I just kept thinking, Will I ever use this again? No. So—yes, I’m embracing minimalism!’

  This observance was not immediately in evidence in the ‘bachelorette pad.’ She’d been there for more than a year by then, but seemed still to be only half moved in. There were two old, broken Hoovers in
the hallway, and a row of grey Stack ’n’ Store baskets, narrowing the way, and a bin bag full of toiletries by the bathroom door.

  ‘Now they’re on my list,’ she said, ‘to sort out. Oh, but do go through it all and see if you want anything. It’s mostly little bottles from hotels. Body lotion, shower gel. Endless little soaps.’

  She’d bought a ground-floor flat in a modern block behind Oxford Road. The New Foundry. It was a nice place, cosy-feeling, as those conversions often aren’t. She even had a small balcony, or terrace, maybe: it was just a few feet off the ground, looking out on a bit of undeveloped ex-car park, bounded by the railway bridge.

  ‘Yes, so that’s my outside space,’ she said. ‘Now. Do you want to give me your coat, Neve? And do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘OK. Yes, please.’

  There was something haphazard about her arrangements. The living room and kitchen were open plan, but she’d bought what she told me now was ‘a room divider’: in fact an overbearing black bookcase, which served to make both areas feel cramped.

  ‘Don’t you keep walking into it?’ I said. ‘You maniac. Isn’t the whole point that they aren’t divided?’

  ‘Mm…’ she said. She was filling the kettle.

  I went out onto the terrace and soon enough she joined me.

  ‘Now, that’s all my bulbs, should be coming up soon,’ she said, pointing at one tub. ‘And that’s my little bird-feeding buffet there…’

  ‘That’s elaborate.’

  ‘I know, yes, well, I get all sorts there, now. Tits and robins and blackbirds and a jay, one morning. There’s a goose waddles round from the canal. Lots of LBJs.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That is a bird-watching term! Little brown jobbies! There’s a pigeon who comes but he’s so stupid he just sits in the water dish!’

  ‘And are they your nosey neighbours?’ I said, nodding up at two men sitting squashed together on their steel balcony, in a redbrick block on the other side of the waste ground.