About a Girl

by Joanne Horniman

  ‘Um …’

  I think that at that moment I was incapable of speaking. I had imagined Flynn coming to my place, had longed for it, and now that she was here it seemed almost incredible. Incredible, and wonderful, yet amazingly ordinary in the clear light of a summer’s day.

  The cat had thrown itself at her feet and rolled over to have its stomach scratched.

  ‘Do you have any cat food?’ she asked.

  Of course I didn’t, so Flynn suggested mashed-up Weet-Bix; she warmed milk and found a dish while I went to shower.

  When I came out, I found her examining my collection of CDS. The cat had finished eating and was sitting in the sun- light from the front windows, fastidiously washing a white paw.

  ‘Do they pass muster?’ I asked, of my CD collection.

  ‘I love Okkervil River, too,’ she said. ‘You must have every album.’

  ‘I think I do. I don’t know what I like best about them – the music or the words – the dream-like images. And I like it that they’re named after a Russian short story …’

  I looked towards my bookshelf where sat White Walls, by Tatyana Tolstaya, but Flynn broke in.

  ‘The music can be so lyrical and heartbreaking, and then sometimes it sounds as if they just go into the studio and rock their dark little hearts out … it’s real raw and unsettling …’

  She looked into my eyes as she said that, and it came home to me that we both knew how raw and unsettling music can be. Then she looked away, and licked her lower lip before flicking through the stack again.

  I made tea, and handed her a cup as she knelt there on the floor. It was so painful and pleasurable to have her in my flat, looking through my things with such an air of candour. I tried to look at the flat through her eyes, and saw how drab it was. The truth was that I had simply not cared much about where I lived, and had not bothered to decorate. I’d moved in with the bare minimum, and picked up things from chain stores and op shops when I found a need for them.

  ‘Well, shall we go?’ said Flynn, jumping to her feet and putting her cup on the kitchen table.

  ‘Go?’

  ‘To the beach?’

  I stood up and tipped the rest of my tea down the sink.

  ‘Bring your swimmers,’ she reminded me as I picked up my bag.

  ‘I don’t have any.’

  ‘What do you bathe in?’

  ‘I don’t.’ I felt myself go pink. ‘I come from an inland place. I used to have some from when I was at school, but when they wore out I just didn’t get around to buying any more.’

  ‘I have a spare pair at home,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  The grey cat went out with us, curling round our legs as I locked the door. It sat on the wall beside the house as we drove away in Flynn’s car. She stopped outside her place and ran in for her spare swimmers, coming back to throw them on the back seat.

  She was a very fast, very confident driver. Even in her old Toyota, she passed newer, more powerful cars in the uphill passing lanes. I felt a grateful sense of release and freedom, sitting there beside her, and a feeling of intimacy, even though (or perhaps because) we didn’t speak much.

  As we got near the beach – it was only a forty-minute drive – the sky seemed larger and bluer, the blue more transparent, the light more diffuse. Since my arrival up north I had scarcely ventured to the coast, and now here I was with Flynn, who knew just the place to go: a beach that was long and practically deserted.

  We ran down to the sand and dropped our stuff. ‘Walk, then swim?’ said Flynn.

  As we set off, two little girls aged about nine or ten came up to us. They wore identical striped shorts, and brightly coloured sunhats, made of straw. ‘Do you know what time it is?’ one asked me.

  ‘I don’t have a watch,’ I told them, ‘or a mobile. But I can tell you approximately. It’s about …’ and I stopped to estimate, ‘… two-thirty.’

  They thanked me and ran happily away.

  ‘People really do come up and ask you the time,’ said Flynn, grinning, and I blushed with pleasure. Maybe this was evidence of my attractiveness and pulling power.

  We came to a huge old log half buried in the sand. Flynn jumped onto it and balanced along its length like a child. She jumped down and went around to do it again and I followed; we laughed as we jumped off it at exactly the same time.

  After a few more turns, Flynn jumped off and ran up the beach. I followed her, and she slowed down so I could catch up. We walked for a while with our heads down, looking for things washed up on the tide line. Flynn found a black cowrie shell, and handed it to me with a flourish. ‘You get the luck!’ she said, and sprinted on ahead a little way before I could ask what she meant. Probably some childhood superstition. I fingered the fine teeth along the bottom of the shell, and put it into my pocket.

  We caught up with the little girls at the end of the beach. One shielded her eyes from the sun with her arm, and her hat fell off. She squinted up at me. ‘Do you think you can tell us the time again?’

  ‘Approximately …?’ put in the other.

  I looked at the sun. ‘I think the time is approximately … fifteen minutes past three,’ I said, making a great show of thinking about it.

  ‘We’d better get back!’ they said in unison, looking at each other. Picking up the fallen sunhat, they thanked me and ran off.

  ‘Do you know what you are?’ said Flynn teasingly, as we turned around to go back ourselves. ‘You’re a Time Lord!’ She bent down and picked up a piece of dried kelp from the sand and placed it around my shoulders. I shook it away with a smile, and we glanced at each other. Her look was full of affection.

  When we got back to where we’d left our things, Flynn stripped off and put on her bikini. There was no one around on our stretch of beach, so there was no need for modesty, but I self-consciously struggled into Flynn’s old one-piece.

  Flynn was taller than I was, sturdier and more muscular, so her swimmers were a bit large for me. She tried tying the straps together with a hair ribbon she found in her bag, but the whole arrangement came undone again.

  ‘Oh, what does it matter if they fall off in the surf?’ she said. ‘Who’s going to look?’

  They did fall off in the surf, or at least the straps fell off my shoulders and the top sagged down, exposing my breasts. I struggled for a while, and then left the water. I didn’t like to admit it to Flynn, but I don’t really like swimming in the ocean. It’s too salty, too rough, and makes you too gritty and uncomfortable afterwards. I have a pernickety side to me. I can be as fastidious as a cat.

  I took our things up under the shade of a scrubby tree growing at the edge of the sand, and sat there in a sticky heap. Shielding my eyes from the sun, I watched as Flynn went out into the waves again and again and again. She seemed tireless.

  Finally she came out, water streaming from her hair. ‘This,’ she said, throwing herself onto the sand next to me, ‘has been the best day.’ She blew water from her nose and sat looking out to sea, her sandy knee touching mine.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘Because I’m starving.’

  I ought to have been hungry, because I’d had no breakfast, just that cup of tea. I wasn’t hungry, because being there with Flynn somehow filled me up and made me not need anything else.

  More than anything, I wanted to lean across to her. It wasn’t far, after all, our knees were still touching … I yearned for the courage to move my head just so far, but the distance was like an eternity, if distance can be measured in time …

  What if I leaned over and kissed Flynn on the mouth?

  It would be a warm, sticky, salty kiss. I would feel the heat from the sun on Flynn’s face. I would see her face up close, and she would be a different Flynn, once I had made that move.

  But I lacked the courage.

/>   Flynn leaned back and took an orange from her bag. Peeling it with her hands, she tore it apart and handed bits to me. I ate them and licked my fingers clean. Flynn delved into her bag for another orange, and repeated the procedure. Then she sat with her elbows on her drawn-up knees, orange juice running from wrists to elbows, her fingers splayed.

  I reached out with my index finger and took a drop of juice that ran down her arm. And put it in my mouth.

  Without indicating that she’d noticed what I’d done, Flynn stood up abruptly and dusted the sand from her legs and backside with firm thwacks that resounded in my ears. Then, without even looking at me, she ran into the water to wash the sand off.

  We struggled into our clothes and found a fish-and-chip shop. We took the parcel down to a nearby jetty, and watched the boats and the pelicans while we ate. Flynn ate delicately but hungrily, pulling the fish apart with her fingers and popping tiny pieces into her mouth. Grease shone on her lips. She saw me watching her and ducked her head, looking away.

  And when we’d finished eating she drove us home. We arrived at my flat just as the sun was going down, sending spears of blinding light through the windscreen of the car. She turned off the engine, and we sat in the silence.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for the day.’

  I didn’t want it to end.

  I wanted to invite Flynn inside. But we’d already spent the whole afternoon together. Surely she would consider that enough.

  Flynn turned her head and looked at me. I saw her eyes, looking into mine, and that lovely mouth. I reached out and touched it, and ran my finger along her bottom lip.

  I had the impression that both of us had forgotten to breathe.

  I removed my hand, and Flynn turned back to face the windscreen.

  And all I could do was gather together my wet lump of towel, and my bag, and get out of the car.

  I did not see her face as she drove away.

  Inside the flat, the bowl Flynn had given to the cat stood empty on the floor. The mug she had used sat on the table. That part of the day seemed a lifetime ago.

  I hung my towel on the line outside, and rinsed Flynn’s swimsuit and hung that beside it. Then I sat on the wall that overlooked the town and watched all the lights come on, while something like the ghost of Flynn hovered nearby on the clothesline, just an empty shape, an absence, a memory.

  Much later, after I had come inside and showered the salt from myself, after I’d made myself a cup of instant coffee, after I’d searched for the cat and failed to find it, and when I’d decided that the whole flat contained a dreary aroma of no expectation whatsoever … after all that, someone knocked at the door at the same instant that my mobile rang.

  The call was from my mother.

  ‘Anna! How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m okay … I’m …’

  The knocking at the door continued. I went to open it, the phone pressed to my ear.

  Flynn.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I told my mother. ‘Someone’s just come to the door. Yes, um … a friend.’ I motioned to Flynn to come in.

  ‘Well, I won’t keep you too long then,’ my mother said. ‘I’m just ringing to say that I thought Molly and I could drive up to see you in a couple of weeks.’

  Flynn had gone to the living-room window and pressed her forehead to the glass, so that she was joined at the temple to her own reflection in the black mirror of night. The cat had drifted in with her, and was coiling about her legs.

  ‘Would that be all right?’ my mother persisted, though I doubt I was making any sense.

  ‘Yes!’ I said, though all I could think about was Flynn. My mouth was so dry I could barely speak.

  After my mother rang off I put down the phone.

  Flynn turned from the window. Her face was as grave as that of a Madonna, or a saint. She bit her lower lip, and without a word took several steps towards me. We sat down on the sofa, side by side. And after a little while, Flynn put her arm around my shoulders, and I leaned against her. We sat like this for a long time.

  We turned to face each other, and Flynn’s mouth found mine. ‘Is it all right to do this?’ she whispered, and I did not answer with words. Then Flynn stood up and held out her hand.

  I took it.

  In the bedroom, we did not switch on the light; enough shone through from the living room for us to see each other.

  We lay down. I put my hand under Flynn’s shirt. Her ribs stood out. I lifted up the shirt and lay with my head on Flynn’s torso, just beneath her breasts. Her heart was pounding as rapidly as my own.

  She was lovely. Soft and strong and tender and surprising. It was like meeting someone for the first time and knowing them instantly. It was like meeting myself.

  Chapter Seven

  I LOVED THE salty flavour of her. She’d not had a shower since coming back from the beach and I loved the way that the ocean water had coarsened her long black hair. She still had sand in the creases of her buttocks, and fanny; the saltiness of her must have been emphasised by the sea. I loved everything about her. I loved her. We had very little sleep; I wanted to say everything to her, do everything with her, but in the end we spoke very little, and learned a great deal about each other.

  The next day at work I offered to unpack the new books because I was too exhausted to face serving people. I loitered in the stockroom and read.

  The book I chose, one that had just arrived, was Notes from Underground, by Dostoyevsky. Hilarious yet disturbing was the quotation from the Sunday Times on the cover. It had a moody photograph of a man’s unshaven face, cigarette between his lips, in tones of blue. It looked like a modern, grungy novel, not one written in Russia in the 1860S.

  I am a sick man … I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man. I think there is something wrong with my liver.

  I could imagine hand-selling it to certain people. Hand-selling. It was one of those specialist bookseller terms that I loved.

  I think I loved everything that day.

  ‘Anna,’ came the voice of the manager from the doorway. I closed the book. ‘Anna, there’s someone to see you.’

  It was Flynn. She was standing in an aisle at the back of the shop, pretending to browse through a pile of discounted cookbooks, and looked up shyly as I approached. It was the first time we’d seen each other since parting that morning, only hours before, yet it was long enough for us to have discovered a newfound shyness. It seemed that all we could do was smile.

  ‘I was on my way to work,’ said Flynn, ‘and I just wanted to see you again.’

  I couldn’t think how to reply. The manager was standing only metres away.

  ‘So … that’s all,’ she said, with a pleased, secretive smile. ‘Anyway, shall I see you tonight?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, my mouth dry.

  ‘I’ll come to your place then.’

  And with a lingering glance, she was gone.

  On the way home, I deliberately avoided going past the café where Flynn worked. I ducked down a side street to a supermarket, where I bought eggs and potatoes and mushrooms and salad. As an afterthought, I bought a tin of cat food. The grey cat had spent the night on the bed.

  I waited impatiently for Flynn to arrive, attempting to tidy the house and discovering there was little to tidy, I lived such a sparse, monk-like life. In the last light of day I went outside to call the cat but it didn’t appear.

  I sat on the warm brick wall in the going-down sun and thought about her. All the clichés about being in love were true. I went over every word, every gesture of the night before. The cat had sat at the foot of the bed, and purred, and Flynn had brought it into bed with us. And then, still unable to sleep, we decided we were ravenously hungry and got up for cheese on toast, which we had eaten sitting close together on this very wall in the dead of
night, the whole town lying silent below.

  The night became chilly, so we went back to bed and huddled under a light doona, and must have slept at last, because I woke with my arm wrapped round her waist. She opened her eyes and stretched and smiled. I watched her get up and go to the window and look out. She had such a strong, narrow back, slim waist and long legs. I loved looking at her.

  Then she wrapped a sheet around herself like a toga, and walked outside, and crouched on the wall in the sun, watching over the town. She smiled up at me when I delivered a cup of tea. And it seemed like a miracle that I had someone who wanted to be with me.

  ‘Anna?’

  Flynn arrived at last. She had been knocking at the door for ages, and finally walked around the building to find me sitting out on the wall daydreaming. It was now quite dark.

  She had washed her hair; it was still damp, and so she was a different Flynn that night, one with soft, clean hair, and a body washed free of sand. She smelled of soap. I offered to make a mushroom omelette, but she said, ‘Are you hungry yet? Because I’m not.’ And we took each other to bed again. But this time we did sleep afterwards through sheer exhaustion, because of not having slept properly the night before.

  When I woke, the bedroom was dark and Flynn was not beside me. Light shone through from the living-room, and when I went out I found that she had dressed and was crouched broodingly on the sofa, her knees drawn up.

  ‘Is anything the matter?’

  She looked up, and bit her lip. ‘No. I mean, I think I should get back to my own place now. Hannah and Caleb will be wondering where I’ve been, two nights in a row.’

  ‘You can say you’ve been with me. I mean, they’re not your mother, are they?’ I think I must have given an uncomfortable laugh.

  ‘Actually, Anna … what I need to do is to take some time to think about all this.’ She gestured with one hand.

  ‘Think about it?’

  What was there to think about? I felt ill, at the thought that she might leave me.

  ‘I mean, it’s all so new to me. I’m not sure that this is what I want.’