First Love

by Gwendoline Riley

  ‘Oh, yes, the gay couple, yes, that’s them, they’re always out, all weathers. There’s an old one and a young one. The old one sits out and drinks in the afternoon. The young one just appears in the mornings in his onesie, having a cigarette. He came up to me in the Spar the other day. I thought, Oh, no, he’s going to tell me they can see me getting undressed! But he didn’t. He said, “Excuse me? You live in the flat opposite ours, don’t you?” So I said, “Er, yes?” And he said, “Did you know there’s a tramp sleeps under your balcony every night?” So—I just sort of shrugged, really. What does he want me to do about it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose some people wouldn’t like it, would they?’

  ‘I don’t care what people do. What’s it to me? I just said, “OK.” ’

  She frowned.

  ‘He probably just enjoyed telling you.’

  ‘Well—I don’t know.’

  ‘Did I just hear the kettle turn off?’

  ‘Oh. Yes. Sorry.’

  She edged past me to get back inside and I followed her in and slid shut the door behind me. It was cold out there.

  I’d been distracted, too, while we were talking, by her right eyelid, which was drooping. Only a mean little chink of that eye was visible.

  ‘Is there something wrong with your eye?’

  ‘Is there? Which one? What do you mean?’

  ‘Your right eye. It’s half shut. Is it sore?’

  ‘Ooh, is it? Wait there. Just. Oh. I can’t do two things. Can you get this tea, Neve? Now where’s my bag? Does it look bad, Neve?’

  I took our tea around-about the ‘room divider’ and over to the settee.

  ‘It’s noticeable. It looks like when you don’t pull the blinds up properly.’

  She came back with her lipstick mirror, peering at herself. ‘Oh dear. Well. What blind’s that? I can’t see!’ She turned the light on and came and sat down next to me, still grinning into the mirror.

  ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Of course I did have the first of my cataract operations last week, so I suppose it could be that. That’s supposed to wear off, though!’

  ‘Do they just do one eye at a time?’

  ‘Mm…Yes, in case it goes wrong, I suppose. Oh, I hope it wears off!’

  She tilted her head further back, into the light. She touched her eyelid, and bared her teeth at the tiny mirror.

  My mother was growing her hair by then. It lay in chancy locks around her neck, held back from her face that day by a padded Alice band.

  ‘Is that new?’ I said. ‘That hairband.’

  ‘Oh. This? Yes, it is. What do you think?’

  She put the mirror down then, and turned from side to side, showing off her ’do. The band was made of sparkly black velvet. It looked like something girls used to wear when I was in infant school. Or posh girls in sitcoms. Sarah Ferguson, did she have one? That kind of person.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

  ‘Oh. Well, I saw someone wearing something similar and I thought I’d try it. While I’m at this intermediate stage. It’s only from Poundland. Now, is that tea OK?’

  ‘Yes. I made it, remember.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course you did.’

  What she most wanted to do that afternoon was to show me her photos, from an unlikely trip she’d made to California, to stay with Eric. He was a visiting professor at USC by then. I don’t know how she finagled the invite, but off she’d gone, to spend a week in Los Feliz, in the apartment the university had provided him with.

  Her pictures—she clicked through them on her computer while I stood at her shoulder—were mostly of the apartment: long strips of windows (ragged palm trees behind), a wall of glass bricks, a breakfast bar, a fire pit.

  ‘Yes, it was very Modernist,’ she said. One lampshade in particular, evidently. She’d taken half a dozen pictures of it.

  ‘Another one of the lampshade, ha ha! Yes, that was very Modernist, Eric said.’

  ‘Did you leave the house?’

  ‘I did. But not as much as I’d have liked, no. I didn’t have a car, obviously, so it’s not easy to get around. It’s hot buses everywhere, so…Wouldn’t you think if you had a guest you might, you know, maybe take her out for dinner one night? A meal by the ocean? Offer to show her around Los Angeles, or the campus? Well, he didn’t. He took me to a diner for a sandwich on my last day there, but I had to force him into that. And it was horrible. Disgusting. “Canadian Ham,” which is Spam, basically.’

  —

  I didn’t stay the night. I met Margaret for a drink and then took a late train home.

  The flat was dark when I arrived. The bedroom, too, so I stayed out in the hallway to get undressed. To no avail, as it turned out. As I got into bed, the light came on. Edwyn sat up, frowned.

  ‘Oh, hello. You’re awake.’

  ‘I am now.’

  ‘Oh dear. Sorry. Were you really asleep?’

  ‘I was trying to fall asleep.’

  Here he blinked and shook his head.

  ‘How are your poor poorly paws?’ I said.

  ‘Oh. Yes. Tender.’

  ‘Tender! Oh, no. Let’s see.’

  I sat up, and he lifted a hand and I held it. He looked at me trustingly.

  ‘Naughty paw,’ I said, and I stroked his hand and then his other hand, an equal number of times. I put my face on his hand.

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Did you have a nice visit?’

  ‘Yes, it was all right. Same old thing.’

  I lay back down, and faced him on the pillow. He looked drawn, worn out. I told him about my mother’s flat.

  ‘Mm…Well, old ladies do just stop bothering, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘No husband anymore, no kids, they just decide to live in filth. Stop cleaning the house, stop keeping themselves clean, or feeding themselves properly. My mother was the same. She’d just eat white bread and jam, unless I went round and cooked for her. So she held that over me. And she started drinking, of course. She could get out to go to the pub all right, with her mad neighbour. Christ, I hated him. Always appearing over the fence. I mean, she made me hate her, really. She made me despise her. Isn’t that dreadful? What did she want, really? A bit of attention.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was filthy. Well, you might think it was.’

  ‘No. Well. I don’t know what to say, then. What was your point?’

  ‘No point. Nothing, really. She doesn’t want much, either. On the face of it, anyway. A friend or two. She must have spent a fortune on that trip, just to sit there. I wonder what this Eric thinks is going on?’

  ‘He probably just thinks she’s a mad old lady.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Can you turn the light off?’

  ‘Yes, sorry. Let’s go to sleep.’

  ‘My hands hurt.’

  ‘OK.’

  We lay in the dark for a while. Then he stroked my back a bit, my shoulders, with his curled up hand.

  ‘I love you. Little one. Little Neve. I do.’

  I could have been asleep. I let some peaceful seconds pass, before I said it back.

  ‘I love you.’

  5

  After that French sojourn, I touched down in Glasgow on a Friday evening, walked from the station to the underground with my holdall bouncing on my back. The air was fumy. The smell of chips came in thin, damp draughts from the arches. Here were greasy, littered streets; a warm, rainy, dark-blue dusk.

  At home I went straight to bed. I pulled the yellow fleece blanket from the cupboard’s top shelf and cosied up against the cold. I’d got into the habit of listening to late-night radio, while I lived there. The phone-ins. I clicked on the set then, before I turned off the light, as outside the gutter dripped sloppily, fitfully:

  ‘But when the monsters come, listen, Stu, I nearly killed my dog last time. I just. I’m telling you. I’ve got a seven-foot garden, I never go in it, I keep my curtains closed.’

  —

  My curtains we
re drawn. I liked the night sky, cool air, crowding chimney pots.

  ‘And er…that saved her you see, Stu, I was going to kill her it was all I’d been thinking about but then that saved her that she said that Oh, would you like a cup of tea? Because I’d been ready that was what I was thinking of when I went round there and when I knocked on the door. So I think that does go to show really that if only women could be less antagonistic and we could all just talk and as I say, have a cup of tea…’

  When I got back from the supermarket, the next day, Kit-Kat was on my couch, stretched out in a milky sunspot. I sat with her while my first lot of washing went through. I avoided my bed, which was covered in bills that needed dealing with.

  Money was about to be a problem. In an attempt to see that off, I headed out again, to the café under Stevie’s place. It was a nice, chilly day: last night’s rain still slathering the pavement. I took a coffee to a computer and scrolled through Gumtree, answered half a dozen ads—cafés, shops. Reading the applications back, as I waited out my slot, I detected an unbalanced enthusiasm. Would anyone notice? I wrote another handful of replies, more carefully this time, and then called Stevie, with a ‘Guess who?’ He was in, doing nothing. I still had some fellowship cash, so I said I’d take him out. We stayed out, too, even though he kept saying he had to be up in the morning.

  By three a.m., sitting on the floor in his hallway, he was saying, ‘Spit in my mouth! Go on!’

  I scrunched up one eye to aim. Then, ‘Now you!’ he said. ‘Open up!’

  His son lived in Kilcreggan with his parents. We drove up there, in the morning. I walked on the beach while he made his visit, my footsteps slurring through the shale.

  —

  After Edwyn and I were married I tried to plot a new path. I cleared out the store room—a bit—put the club chair back in the living room. I bought a small desk, which I have against the wall, under the skylight.

  In a new notebook, I wrote down his line: ‘It’s freedom that counts.’ Did I believe it? It didn’t seem to be what I’d aimed for. The opposite, rather. An illusion of freedom: snap-twist getaways with no plans: nothing real. I’d given my freedom away. Time and again. As if I had contempt for it. Or was it hopelessness I felt, that I was so negligent? Or did it hardly matter, in fact? If I could just dissolve myself, as I always had, in time, in art, when I felt loss or lack. I learned about that when I was little. The other world. That’s what I had to guard, wasn’t it?

  I wrote down, things like:

  Untangle yourself. Stop saying you love him. You’re wearing a groove in your mind. Say it when you mean it. Save money. Small steps. Save money every month. Remember you’re a grown woman now. Be more proud and more relaxed. Don’t feel persecuted by stupid students. Don’t think about them. Don’t let your mind get colonized. Get on with your work. Don’t pet him. Don’t act like a baby. Don’t be a cat. Be decent to him and to yourself. Respect yourself and him. See your friends. Don’t be sly. Don’t be deceitful. Don’t snoop. Don’t ask him questions for the sake of it, it’s lonely-making to sit and listen when he’s said it before, when he won’t let you in. Keep your footing. Leave the room if he calls you a name. If you save money you can leave the flat if he’s nasty. Stand up for yourself but don’t waste your energy. This is your time and your energy. Don’t try and ‘manage’ him. Be natural and let him be natural. That’s what love is. No more cramped feelings, on either side.

  How did these small steps fare? Strangely. Keeping myself to myself more. Sometimes it felt like we’d done it. Sometimes not. Sometimes he whimpered in pain and I was Mrs Pusskins again, and what was wrong with that? It felt soothing. Coming home from work, standing on the landing, he’d open his mouth and lift his arms for a hug, and we’d hold each other and I’d feel safe and happy, with someone I could love in a natural way.

  Once, when I was in the living room after he’d gone to bed, he came in and did a little pirouette in his Y-fronts, trying to get me to look. I did look up and smile, but I didn’t run to him, like I used to, didn’t fuss him. Was that wrong? He performed a hurt little moue in the proscenium, before walking off slowly with an ‘I say’ and a sort of half-toddlerish wobbling walk.

  ‘That was a good dance!’ I called after him, stupidly.

  I did see my friends more, stayed later at work to do my own work.

  One night I told him how things were panning out with my father’s estate. There was a buyer, at last, for the house, and once his debts were cleared there was going to be about £25,000 left, to be split between me and my brother. There was a lot of debt: credit cards and a bankruptcy, secured against the house. Then there was what we owed Patrick for making the place saleable (my father hadn’t done any upkeep, in twenty-five years.)

  ‘I suppose you’ll want to leave me now,’ Edwyn said.

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Well. I’ve been thinking we need to get your bookcases built, don’t we? I must ring Warren and get the number for his man, see if he’s got time to do that this month. It’s ridiculous you not having your things here, but I never had a moment, and I was ill…’

  ‘I know. That’s OK. Thank you. That’ll be brilliant, to have my books.’

  I was very moved by that, in that it seemed to mean he did want me around, and I fussed him as I’d told myself not to, and he seemed happy.

  Only the next day, it went wrong again. As he came in with some shopping, I was telling him about my afternoon. I had a friend who’d started a new job, and she’d been amusing about it and I was just trying to recreate that, I suppose, her little pen portraits. She worked for a children’s charity and the office was decorated with child-safety posters, each featuring a cartoon of a potential threat. A toddler investigating a hanging blind cord. A child reaching for a butcher’s knife. I was trying to describe this, not very well, I expect, but I chattered on.

  Edwyn passed me something and I continued to talk, looking at what was in my hand too late.

  ‘ “Thank you for my walnuts.” ’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’ve bought you some walnuts. You don’t think you should say thank you?’

  ‘I was in the middle of telling you something. I didn’t notice. Edwyn? Thank you. Of course.’

  ‘You think I just exist to sort of cater to you, is that it?’

  ‘Edwyn. I say thank you every day for what you do for me. I say thank you after every meal, what’s going on?’

  He walked out then, left the bags, put his rucksack back on.

  ‘I’ll go to the pub, I don’t want to sit with a defensive whiner. Do you want me to eat out more? Is this all too much trouble for you?’

  ‘What are you talking about? Don’t go out, please. I just didn’t notice what you’d handed me.’

  His shoulders were rounded and he was looking at me fearfully, as if I were a threat.

  It was no choice but an instinct, I was sure, a law of his being, this ripping the ground away. So I couldn’t quibble. I had to accept it or not. And after all it couldn’t be very nice for him. So with warm energy, I sought to reassure him, and thank him, and tell him what was coming for tea. He let himself be coaxed, eventually.

  The tension could make me sick, leading up to our worst rows. I remember getting cramps from hearing the bathroom light turned on and off. Click-ping! Click-ping! A pause. Click-ping! He was going to test it until it broke.

  ‘Fuck!’ he shouted, when it did. And then I heard him kick the door.

  That night with the walnuts, I knew things weren’t settled, and sure enough, after tea, something on the TV set him off. We were watching a silly crime show, as we often did. In this one the pretty village school teacher was confiding to her friend over coffee and bickies:

  ‘Clive’s just not the man I married,’ she said. She was a gamine little thing, with hennaed hair, and draped in scarves, as arty types are in these productions.

  Edwyn said,

  ‘Disappointed cunt. Resentful bitch.’


  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Men get older, and their cunt wives are “disappointed” and they’re treated like dirt. Evil shallow fucking bitches. Oh, he isn’t the man I married. Stupid shallow cunt. Disappointed cunt, drinking in disappointment with the air you fucking breathe.’

  I should have just gone to bed then, that’s what I’d told myself to do.

  ‘When did women become so resentful?’ Edwyn went on. ‘They didn’t used to be resentful, they used to be happy with a home, children…’

  ‘Did they? That’s a new one.’

  ‘For generations, they were happy with a home, a husband and children. That’s all they wanted.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘In the past they were happy with a home, a husband…’

  ‘I heard you the first time. If they were so happy…’

  ‘They were happy with a home, a husband…’

  ‘You’ve said this four times, why do you keep repeating it? You’re frightening me.’

  ‘They were happy with a home, a husband and children. This silly feminist shit, it’s beneath you. Women were happy.’

  ‘Edwyn, are you in there? What are you doing?’

  His expression—chin up, staring straight ahead—was complacent, haughty. And then it changed, as if an acid had burnt off that layer.

  ‘If you ever let me finish a fucking sentence, then I wouldn’t need to repeat myself, would I?’ he said, rounding on me.

  ‘You did finish it. You did finish it, then you kept on saying it! Edwyn, please…’

  ‘Christ. This is what I’ve got to look forward to, is it? Jesus…This fishwife, whining voice…You know, I’m convinced half of this pain is psychosomatic, and I’m looking at the cause. Cunt.’

  I got up and went to the bathroom then, washed my face, brushed my teeth. I had learnt, after all. That once it had happened, I should say as little as possible. There never was any way to dismantle what they said. There just wasn’t. I went to bed. For a while I could hear him bashing about in the kitchen. Later, when he came in, he turned on the big light, tried to slam the door (it doesn’t really slam), and got undressed angrily.